Designing Scaffolds For Skin Tissue Engineering

Abstract

Tissue engineering has been developed as a new system for repairing damaged or diseased tissues to overcome the limitations of current therapies. Aliphatic polyesters, such as polycaprolactone (PCL) and polydioxanone (PDO), have been commonly utilized in biodegradable scaffold. The combination of these polymers, by copolymerization and electrospinning, enables a range of mechanical properties and degradation rates which can be used for biomedical procedures. Likewise, hydrogels are gaining lot of usage in biomedical applications for wound healing, cartilage and bone regeneration due to their biocompatibility and similar properties to natural tissue. In the present study, PDO‐PCL scaffolds were synthesized using the electrospinning technique. Similarly, 2% and 4% Alginate hydrogels were synthesized by crosslinking with 2% calcium chloride. The polymer scaffolds and hydrogels were individually tested for their mechanical properties along with skin cells: keratinocytes and fibroblast alone and in co‐culturing; keratinocytes seeded on top of fibroblast, for compatibility and proliferation. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and dynamic transition analyzer analysis were performed to confirm proper tensile properties suitable for tissue environment. DSC analysis shows PDO with a melting point at 99.80° and glass transition at 76.61 J/g. PCL scaffold with a melting point at 57.56° and glass transition at 79.15 J/g showing a 3–5° decrease between PDO polymer sample compared to no significant changes with PCL polymer samples. Cell viability and cell proliferation of each hydrogel scaffold and electrospun scaffold were evaluated over a course of 28 days. MTT cell proliferation assay was done to measure the cell viability on these scaffolds. Neutral red dye uptake and DAPI (4′,6‐diamidino‐2‐phenylindole) staining confirmed the growth of cells on these scaffolds. Results show viability of keratinocytes and fibroblast at 80% up to 28 days and co‐cultured cells at 60% up to 28 days. SEM showed confirmation of cell adhesion and growth on scaffolds for up to 28 days. Overall this study aims on identifying various biomaterials which can be used for skin tissue engineering and their several applications in the field.Support or Funding InformationThis work was supported by NSF‐EIR (CBET‐1831282) to Dr. Komal Vig (PI).This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.