Guidance of Olfactory Ensheathing Cell Growth and Migration on Electrospun Silk Fibroin Scaffolds

Abstract

Transplantation of olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) is a potential treatment for spinal cord injury (SCI). However, this process lacks extracellular matrix guiding cell growth, tissue morphogenesis, and remodeling. In order to solve this problem, we fabricated silk fibroin scaffolds (SFS) with different fiber diameters by electrospinning. The behaviors of OECs on 300 and 1800 nm SFS were studied by analyzing cell morphological feature, distribution, and proliferation. The results showed the 300 nm SFS with good potential to guide OECs growth. Subsequently, the properties of 300 nm SFS were further investigated along with PLL. With 300 nm SFS, the preservation of cell phenotype was confirmed by the presence of cell-specific markers, including nerve growth factor receptor p75 and glial fibrillary acidic protein. And the migration behaviors of OECs were also observed by Leica AF6000. In addition, migration tracks, turning behavior, migration distances, migration speeds, and forward migration indices were calculated. Furthermore, the expression of neurotrophic factors was assayed at transcription and protein levels using RT-PCR and ELISA. All these results indicated the diameter of the fiber played an important role in guiding cell adhesion, growth, and migration in vitro and the 300 nm SFS could be suitable to construct tissue-engineered scaffolds for SCI repair.

One-Dimensional Migration of Olfactory Ensheathing Cells on Synthetic Materials: Experimental and Numerical Characterization

“…The cell transmembrane proteins responsible for the cytoskeleton development and organization are sensitive to the regularly alternating pattern at the nanometer scale. A similar effect was reported in (35), where the authors found a dependence of cell shape and alignment on the dimensions of electrospun silk fibroin fibres.…”

“…To facilitate this process of cell growth and guidance many researchers have started to develop biohybrids where OECs are seeded previously on different biomaterials (35)(36)(37)(38)(39). These kinds of structures have been produced from natural biomaterials such as alginate (40), collagen (41,42) and chitosan, synthetic polymers such as polyethylene glycol (43) , polylactic acid (44) or poly--caprolactone (39,43), and composite biomaterials (45).…”

Myelin-associated proteins block the migration of olfactory ensheathing cells: an in vitro study using single-cell tracking and traction force microscopy

“…5F). proliferation has recently been carried out on over glass surfaces with artificially generated gradients (Yan et al, 2003;Cao et al, 2006;Vukovic et al, 2009;Huang et al, 2011), in collagen scaffolds (Wang et al, 2006;Mollers et al, 2009), in nanofibers (Shen et al, 2010) and in biomaterial-coated substrates (Martin-Lopez et al, 2010b;Martin-Lopez et al, 2010a).…”

Biodegradable Cell-Seeded Nanofiber Scaffolds for Neural Repair

“…Wang et al discovered that crossed fibers in the aligned fiber scaffold could be detrimental in axonal outgrowth, and that cell attachment and growth could depend on fiber density [95]. In addition, the diameter of electrospun fibers could also influence cell attachment, proliferation and migration [281]. The electrospinning process can be readily used to produce polymer fibers on the nanometer scale.…”