Abstract
Cell-based therapies have recently been the focus of much research to enhance skin wound healing. An important challenge will be to develop vehicles for cell delivery that promote survival and uniform distribution of cells across the wound bed. These systems should be stiff enough to facilitate handling, whilst soft enough to limit damage to newly synthesized wound tissue and minimize patient discomfort. Herein, we developed several novel modifiable nanofibre scaffolds comprised of Poly (ε-caprolactone) (PCL) and gelatin (GE). We asked whether they could be used as a functional receptacle for adult human Skin-derived Precursor Cells (hSKPs) and how naked scaffolds impact endogenous skin wound healing. PCL and GE were electrospun in a single facile solvent to create composite scaffolds and displayed unique morphological and mechanical properties. After seeding with adult hSKPs, deposition of extracellular matrix proteins and sulphated glycosaminoglycans was found to be enhanced in composite grafts. Moreover, composite scaffolds exhibited significantly higher cell proliferation, greater cell spreading and integration within the nanofiber mats. Transplantation of acellular scaffolds into wounds revealed scaffolds exhibited improvement in dermal-epidermal thickness, axonal density and collagen deposition. These results demonstrate that PCL-based nanofiber scaffolds show promise as a cell delivery system for wound healing.
Highlights
Besides providing a physical barrier that prevents pathologic infection, skin performs a range of vital functions that maintain hydration, thermoregulation and body metabolism
In order to determine whether these nanofiber scaffolds could be used as a vehicle for cell delivery into wounds, we examined the growth of human Skin-derived Precursor Cells (hSKPs) on four different scaffold compositions (PCL, PCL immobilized with RGD (PCL-RGD), PCL coated with gelatin (PCL-cGE) and PCL-bGE) in vitro
Our findings suggest that PCL based nanofibers are suitable to be used as a functional receptacle for adult hSKPs and show promise as a cell delivery system for wound healing
Summary
Besides providing a physical barrier that prevents pathologic infection, skin performs a range of vital functions that maintain hydration, thermoregulation and body metabolism. It has been demonstrated that following transplantation into injured skin or in combination with competent epithelial cells, rodent hfDSCs have the capacity to generate new dermal cells as well as skin appendages, both of which are important for the functional restoration of skin following injury[31]. As these hSKPs/dermal progenitors can readily be propagated from a minimally-invasive skin biopsy and can generate a diverse array of dermal fibroblast phenotypes, they hold great promise as a renewable source of progenitors for improved dermal wound healing
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