Potential use of silkworm gut fiber braids as scaffolds for tendon and ligament tissue engineering

Abstract

Tendon and ligament tissue engineering require scaffolds for the treatment of various conditions in the medical field. These must meet requirements such as high tensile strength, biocompatibility, fast and stable repair and a rate of degradation that allows the repair of the damaged tissue. In this work, we propose the use of silkworm gut fiber braids as materials to temporarily replace and repair this type of tissues. The mechanical characterization of the braids made with different number of silk gut fibers is provided, as well as a descriptive analysis of the proliferation and adhesion of cultures of adult human mesenchymal stem cells from bone marrow and fibroblasts (L929) on the braids. As expected, the breaking force increases linearly in the scaffold with the number of fibers, thus being a parameter adaptable to the specific requirements of the tissue to repair and the animal model of study. On the other hand, in all of the cases studied, the values obtained for the elastic modulus of the hydrated fibers were in the range of the ones reported for various human tendons and ligaments. Moreover, the scaffold demonstrated excellent biocompatibility in vitro, allowing the adhesion and proliferation, in the same culture conditions, of the two cell types studied, therefore posing as an ideal candidate to be employed in future in vivo studies that allow elucidating its behavior in the articular environment or extra‐articular tendinous areas. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res B Part B: 2019. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater 107B: 2209–2215, 2019.

Preparation and biological characteristics of a bovine acellular tendon fiber material

“…Lyophilized ATF linear possesses good biomechanics compared with other natural fiber materials, like silk. Fabricated silkworm gut fiber braids to replace and repair damaged tendon tissue, and they found the breaking force was about 25.4 ± 14.0 N with a cross‐sectional area of 1.5 ± 0.7 mm 2 (D ≈ 1.38 mm) 31 . While the breaking force was about 26.31 ± 7.59 N of lyophilized ATFs linear fiber with a diameter of 0.99 mm.…”

Fibrous Systems as Potential Solutions for Tendon and Ligament Repair, Healing, and Regeneration

“…proposed a braided fibrous structure made of natural‐derived materials (i.e., silkworm gut), showing great biocompatibility in vitro as well as sufficient mechanical properties for tendon and ligaments applications. [ 153 ] Cooper et al. examined the influence of different geometry on braid‐twisted scaffold properties, showing that circular braided geometry had significantly higher maximum tensile load compared to the rectangular shape.…”

Sustainable nanofibers in tissue engineering and biomedical applications

“…More particularly, aligned nanofibers are known to increase cell response and is found as a potential candidate for ligament tissue engineering. [180][181][182][183][184] Electrospun fibers are found to be potential candidate for ligament tissue engineering; however, development of porous scaffolds, mimicking the dimensions of tissues such as size, stiffness, and strength remains as a challenging task. Earlier studies have reported on different shapes such as rolled, stacked, and braided electrospun sheets for producing scaffolds with customized sizes and mechanical properties.…”