Nanofiber alignment and direction of mechanical strain affect the ECM production of human ACL fibroblast

The effect of the alignment of electrospun fibrous scaffolds on Schwann cell maturation

“…When cultured on aligned fibers, the cytoskeleton and nuclei aligned and elongated on the fiber axes. Such cellular alignment is very similar to that observed with other cell types such as human fibroblasts and Schwann cells in other studies [2,4].…”

“…Such scaffolds hold the promise to provide the topographic cues to the seeded cells and may potentially enhance tissue regeneration. A few studies have shown that aligned electrospun scaffolds are able to provide contact guidance to cultured cells, resulting in an elongation and alignment of cells along the axes of the fibers [2][3][4]. The majority of the studies revolve around the evaluation of cell morphological changes, whilst some assess the preservation of cell phenotype via gene or protein expression analysis [5,6].…”

Cell colonization in degradable 3D porous matrices

“…In some cases where the material is formed from a bed of stacked fibers fiber thickness is characterized as the diameter of the individual fibers. The fibers may be distributed randomly, as in electrospinning [103][104][105] or form a highly organized system with regular repeating pore units, as in solid freeform fabrication. 106 Thus the fiber thickness, length, width and shape (circular rectangular, etc.)…”

Modeling the impact of scaffold architecture and mechanical loading on collagen turnover in engineered cardiovascular tissues

“…6 Fit of the experimental equibiaxial mechanical behavior for the anisotropic scaffold (left). Predicted biaxial mechanical behavior of the isotropic scaffold (right) by using the optimal material parameters of the anisotropic scaffold contact guidance by the scaffold fibers (Niklason 2009;de Jonge 2013), enhanced collagen deposition due to scaffold anisotropy (Lee 2005;Teh et al 2013) or use of cyclic load (Boerboom et al 2008;Rubbens 2009) and load protection from enzymatic degradation (Huang and Yannas 1977;Wyatt et al 2009). It should be noticed that the described phenomena only occur when microfibrous scaffolds are used.…”

“…φ max is the maximum collagen volume fraction, which is set 0.15 [estimated as possible collagen volume fraction after 2 weeks of tissue culture from the work of Van Geemen (2012) and Mol (2005)], and φ c is the current total collagen volume fraction. The exponential of β s indicates that the scaffold anisotropy influences the amount of collagen that is produced (Lee 2005;Teh et al 2013). Furthermore, the inverse proportionality with the current radius r(γ ) and the collagen fiber length l(γ ) indicates that the volume of collagen deposited by the cells in each direction is constant at each time step.…”