Wound healing is vital for patients with complex wounds
including
burns. While the gold standard of skin transplantation ensures a surgical
treatment to heal wounds, it has its limitations, for example, insufficient
donor sites for patients with large burn wounds and creation of wounds
and pain when harvesting the donor skin. Therefore, tissue-engineered
skin is of paramount importance. The aim of this study is to investigate
and characterize an elastomeric acellular scaffold that would demonstrate
the ability to promote skin regeneration. A hybrid gelatin-based electrospun
scaffold is fabricated via the use of biodegradable polycarbonate
polyurethane (PU). It is hypothesized that the addition of PU would
enable a tailored degradation rate and an enhanced mechanical strength
of electrospun gelatin. Introducing 20% PU to gelatin scaffolds (Gel80–PU20)
results in a significant increase in the degradation resistance, yield
strength, and elongation of these scaffolds without altering the cell
viability. In vivo studies using a mouse excisional wound biopsy grafted
with the scaffolds reveals that the Gel80–PU20 scaffold enables
greater cell infiltration than clinically established matrices, for
example, Integra (dermal regeneration matrix, DRM), a benchmark scaffold.
Immunostaining shows fewer macrophages and myofibroblastic cells on
the Gel80–PU20 scaffold when compared with the DRM. The findings
show that electrospun Gel80–PU20 scaffolds hold potential for
generating tissue substitutes and overcoming some limitations of conventional
wound care matrices.