Abstract
Paper has recently found widespread applications in biomedical fields, especially as an alternative scaffolding material for cell cultures, owing to properties such as its fibrous nature, porosity and flexibility. However, paper on its own is not an optimal material for cell cultures as it lacks adhesion moieties specific to mammalian cells, and modifications such as hydrogel integration and chemical vapor deposition are necessary to make it a favorable scaffolding material. The present study focuses on modification of filter paper through electrospin-coating and dip-coating with polycaprolactone (PCL), a promising biomaterial in tissue engineering. Morphological analysis, evaluation of cell viability, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity and live/dead assays were conducted to study the potential of the modified paper-based scaffold. The results were compared to filter paper (FP) and electrospun PCL (ES-PCL) as reference samples. The results indicate that electrospin-coating paper is a simple and efficient way of modifying FP. It not only improves the morphology of the deposited electrospun layer through reduction of the fiber diameter by nearly 75%, but also greatly reduces the scaffold fabrication time compared to ES-PCL. The biochemical assays (Resazurin and ALP) indicate that electrospin-coated filter paper (ES-PCL/FP) provides significantly higher readings compared to all other groups. The live/dead results also show improved cell-distribution and cell-scaffold attachment all over the ES-PCL/FP.
Highlights
Paper, with history dating back thousands of years to when it was initially invented as a tool to record and preserve information, has recently found widespread applications in biomedical fields, such as paper-based electronics [1], low-cost and disposable analytical platforms [2,3,4], microfluidic devices for drug screening [5], and disease modeling [6,7,8,9]
With filter paper (FP) serving as the collecting platform during electrospinning, the diameters of the PCL fibers produced have been reduced by approximately 75%
When FP was just dipped into the PCL solution, there was only a small change in FP fiber diameter, a reduction of 12%
Summary
With history dating back thousands of years to when it was initially invented as a tool to record and preserve information, has recently found widespread applications in biomedical fields, such as paper-based electronics [1], low-cost and disposable analytical platforms [2,3,4], microfluidic devices for drug screening [5], and disease modeling [6,7,8,9]. Various modification methods for paper have been reported, including binding of ceramics to the paper surface with latex binder to modify the topography [18], chemical vapor deposition of polymers onto paper to increase the cell adhesion moiety for better cell growth [9], wax printing on paper to manipulate the proliferation direction of cells, and the addition of hydrogels to permit better cell migration within a stacked-up paper scaffold [7,8] Most of these modification methods use polymers to modify the properties of paper scaffolds to be more biochemically favorable for cell culture. The results suggest that electrospin-coating of paper has great potential to improve cell viability and tissue formation as a scaffolding material
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
