Improving myoblast differentiation on electrospun poly(ε‐caprolactone) scaffolds

Abstract

Polymer scaffolds are used as an alternative to support tissue regeneration when it does not occur on its own. Cell response on polymer scaffolds is determined by factors such as polymer composition, topology, and the presence of other molecules. We evaluated the cellular response of murine skeletal muscle myoblasts on aligned or unaligned fibers obtained by electrospinning poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL), and blends with poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) or decorin, a proteoglycan known to regulate myogenesis. The results showed that aligned PCL fibers with higher content of PLGA promote cell growth and improve the quality of differentiation with PLGA scaffolds having the highest confluence at over 68% of coverage per field of view for myoblasts and more than 7% of coverage for myotubes. At the same time, the addition of decorin greatly improves the quantity and quality of differentiated cells in terms of cell fusion, myotube length and thickness, being 71, 10, and 51% greater than without the protein, respectively. Interestingly, our results suggest that at certain concentrations, the effect of decorin on myoblast differentiation exceeds the topological effect of fiber alignment. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 105A: 2241-2251, 2017.

Biomaterials in Tendon and Skeletal Muscle Tissue Engineering: Current Trends and Challenges

“…Fishman et al (2013) established a non-exhaustive list of criteria that cells should meet to be suitable candidates for muscle engineering [ 172 ]. According to the literature data ( Table 4 ), four cell types are predominantly employed in muscle engineering: the mouse C2C12 myoblast cell line [ 173 , 174 , 175 , 176 , 177 , 178 , 179 , 180 , 181 , 182 , 183 , 184 , 185 , 186 , 187 , 188 , 189 , 190 , 191 , 192 , 193 , 194 , 195 , 196 , 197 , 198 ], primary myoblast-derived satellite cells (SCs) [ 175 , 199 , 200 ], primary myoblast from different species [ 181 , 201 , 202 , 203 , 204 ], and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) [ 177 , 205 ]. SCs are an appealing solution as they are relatively easy to isolate and are also the direct precursor of myoblasts.…”

“…Most of the synthetic polymers used for muscle tissue engineering scaffolds are manufactured from polyesters, which include poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) [ 198 , 205 ], (PGA) [ 256 , 257 ], poly(lactic acid) (PLA) [ 258 , 259 ], poly(caprolactone) (PCL) [ 190 , 191 , 260 ], and their copolymer poly[(lacticacid)-co-(glycolic acid)] (PLGA) [ 113 , 186 , 190 , 195 , 261 , 262 ]. These polymers are well characterized and have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for certain human uses [ 263 ].…”

“…The main materials that were used to produce electrospun scaffolds for skeletal muscle engineering are biocompatible and biodegradable synthetic polymers, such as PLGA [ 186 ], PCL [ 189 , 190 , 191 , 196 , 197 , 198 , 260 , 292 ], PVDF [ 187 ], and polyurethane [ 184 , 185 , 192 ]. These materials can also be of natural origin such as collagen [ 188 , 195 , 292 ], gelatin, decorin, silk fibroin, alone or mixed [ 190 , 196 ]. As for the gels, conductive elements can be added to the polymer, such as graphene [ 195 ], carbon nanotubes [ 192 , 194 , 198 ], polyaniline (PANi) [ 191 ], or gold nanoparticules [ 265 , 275 ].…”

“…It is well-documented that aligned fibers in electrospun scaffolds cause myoblast cytoskeletal reorganization, cell orientation along the fibers, and cell fusion into myotubes, unlike randomly oriented fibers [ 184 , 186 , 187 , 190 ]. Physicochemical cues for polymers influence myoblast differentiation, hydrophilic properties, and low matrix stiffness had a beneficial effect on cell response.…”

Cellular Response to Surface Morphology: Electrospinning and Computational Modeling

“…This section of the review will discuss how electrospun mats with controlled porosity and surface morphology have been used to influence the behavior of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) (Jiang et al, 2015 ; Yin et al, 2015 ; Baudequin et al, 2017 ; Lin et al, 2017 ; Liu et al, 2017 ; Nedjari et al, 2017 ; Su et al, 2017 ; Zhang et al, 2017 ; Ghosh et al, 2018 ; Jin et al, 2018 ; Rahman et al, 2018 ; Sankar et al, 2018 ) and human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) (Fioretta et al, 2014 ; Xu et al, 2015 ; Shin et al, 2017 ; Taskin et al, 2017 ; Yan et al, 2017 ; Ahmed et al, 2018 ). The literature on other cell lines, such as on myoblasts (Mele et al, 2015 ; Jun et al, 2016 ; Park et al, 2016 ; Tallawi et al, 2016 ; Abarzúa-Illanes et al, 2017 ; Yang et al, 2017 ) and neuron-like cells (Binan et al, 2014 ; Xie et al, 2014 ; Malkoc et al, 2015 ; Xue et al, 2017 ; Hajiali et al, 2018 ; Xia and Xia, 2018 ), will not be analyzed in detail here but a summary of it is reported in Table 1 .…”