A Review of Nanofiber Shish Kebabs and Their Potential in Creating Effective Biomimetic Bone Scaffolds

Abstract

Synthetic scaffolds have emerged as a promising strategy in the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine due to their biocompatibility and resemblance of the extracellular matrix in tissues. Scaffolds can be tailored to specific architectures and have a controlled degradation based on their composition. However, one of the main drawbacks of synthetic scaffolds is that they are often limited due to their bioactivity. A novel technique that recently emerged for bone and mineralization applications has shown successful cellular bioactivity, which involves the polymer crystallization of nanofibers called nanofiber shish kebabs. These scaffolds allow for the formation of periodic kebab structure that is perpendicular to the nanofiber axis, which mimic mineralized collagen fibrils. They have attracted attention in bone tissue engineering because of their ability to direct biomimetic mineralization. Combined with block copolymer chemistry, the kebabs have the ability to attract Ca+2 and PO4−2 ions forming calcium phosphate minerals due to their negative charges. This review characterizes the nanofiber shish kebabs and similar systems in literature, investigates the biocompatibility and cellular response of these systems in vitro, and determines the ongoing and future research. Our purpose is to emphasize the potential and novelty of nanofiber shish kebabs as bone scaffolds, which closely mimic the hierarchical structure of bone. The current gold standard for bone tissue engineering is the use of autografts, the harvesting of the patient’s own healthy bone from a secondary location to replace the defect bone. This treatment is often painful and limited. This review discusses the potential of nanofiber shish kebabs as a bone scaffold for bone replacement. The purpose of this review is to summarize the research that have been done on nanofiber shish kebab scaffolds including material characterization and cellular behavior of different cell types on the scaffolds.