Structure and properties of slow-resorbing nanofibers obtained by (co-axial) electrospinning as tissue scaffolds in regenerative medicine

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PeerJ 5:e4125

Andrzej Hudecki1, Joanna Gola2, Saeid Ghavami3,4, Magdalena Skonieczna5, Jarosław Markowski6, Wirginia Likus7, Magdalena Lewandowska8, Wojciech Maziarz9, Marek J. Los10,11,12
 
1 Institute of Nonferrous Metals, Gliwice, Poland
2 Department of Molecular Biology, School of Pharmacy with the Division of Laboratory Medicine in Sosnowiec, Medical University of Silesia, Sosnowiec, Poland
3 Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada
4 Health Policy Research Center, Institute of Health Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran
5 Biosystems Group, Institute of Automatic Control, Faculty of Automatics, Electronics and Informatics, and Biotechnology Centre, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland
6 ENT Department, School of Medicine in Katowice, Medical University of Silesia in Katowice, Katowice, Poland
7 Department of Anatomy, School of Health Sciences in Katowice, Medical University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland
8 Department of Pathology, Pomeranian Medical University, Szczecin, Poland
9 Institute of Metallurgy and Material Science Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków, Poland
10 Małopolska Center of Biotechnology, Kraków, Poland
11 Linkocare Life Sciences AB, Linkoping, Sweden
12 Centre de biophysique moléculaire CNRS, Rue Charles Sadron, Orleans cedex 2, France

Abstract

With the rapid advancement of regenerative medicine technologies, there is an urgent need for the development of new, cell-friendly techniques for obtaining nanofibers—the raw material for an artificial extracellular matrix production. We investigated the structure and properties of PCL10 nanofibers, PCL5/PCL10 core-shell type nanofibers, as well as PCL5/PCLAg nanofibres prepared by electrospinning. For the production of the fiber variants, a 5–10% solution of polycaprolactone (PCL) (Mw = 70,000–90,000), dissolved in a mixture of formic acid and acetic acid at a ratio of 70:30 m/m was used. In order to obtain fibers containing PCLAg 1% of silver nanoparticles was added. The electrospin was conducted using the above-described solutions at the electrostatic field. The subsequent bio-analysis shows that synthesis of core-shell nanofibers PCL5/PCL10, and the silver-doped variant nanofiber core shell PCL5/PCLAg, by using organic acids as solvents, is a robust technique. Furthermore, the incorporation of silver nanoparticles into PCL5/PCLAg makes such nanofibers toxic to model microbes without compromising its biocompatibility. Nanofibers obtained such way may then be used in regenerative medicine, for the preparation of extracellular scaffolds: (i) for controlled bone regeneration due to the long decay time of the PCL, (ii) as bioscaffolds for generation of other types of artificial tissues, (iii) and as carriers of nanocapsules for local drug delivery. Furthermore, the used solvents are significantly less toxic than the solvents for polycaprolactone currently commonly used in electrospin, like for example chloroform (CHCl3), methanol (CH3OH), dimethylformamide (C3H7NO) or tetrahydrofuran (C4H8O), hence the presented here electrospin technique may allow for the production of multilayer nanofibres more suitable for the use in medical field.

Keywords

Policaprolacotne
Nanofibers
Solution electrospinnning
Core-shell nanofibers
Co-axial electrospinning
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PeerJ