Electrospinning Fabrication and Cytocompatibility Investigation of Nanodiamond Particles-Gelatin Fibrous Tubular Scaffolds for Nerve Regeneration.

Elena Olăreț,Bogdan Ștefan Vasile,Iulian Boerașu,Aida Șelaru,Doris Steinmüller-Nethl,Izabela-Cristina Stancu,Diana-Maria Drăgușin,Adriana Lungu,Andrada Serafim,Alexandra Dobranici,Sorina Dinescu,Horia Iovu,Marieta Costache

doi:10.3390/polym13030407

Abstract

This paper reports the electrospinning fabrication of flexible nanostructured tubular scaffolds, based on fish gelatin (FG) and nanodiamond nanoparticles (NDs), and their cytocompatibility with murine neural stem cells. The effects of both nanofiller and protein concentration on the scaffold morphology, aqueous affinity, size modification at rehydration, and degradation are assessed. Our findings indicate that nanostructuring with low amounts of NDs may modify the fiber properties, including a certain regional parallel orientation of fiber segments. NE-4C cells form dense clusters that strongly adhere to the surface of FG50-based scaffolds, while also increasing FG concentration and adding NDs favor cellular infiltration into the flexible fibrous FG70_NDs nanocomposite. This research illustrates the potential of nanostructured NDs-FG fibers as scaffolds for nerve repair and regeneration. We also emphasize the importance of further understanding the effect of the nanofiller-protein interphase on the microstructure and properties of electrospun fibers and on cell-interactivity.

Highlights

The potential of nanodiamond particles (NDs) to guide or stimulate cell adhesion as films or when dispersed at low loadings in fibrous scaffolds based on fish gelatin (FG) was previously reported [23,24,26]
To investigate the effect of low amounts of NDs on cell-interactions, the protein was dissolved in 1% nanoparticle dispersions
It can be noticed that compared to the positive control, all tested composites presented a significantly low percentage of cytotoxicity during one week of cell culture. These results indicate that fish gelatin composites loaded with 1% NDs do not induce significant cell death on murine neural stem cells during one week of culture

Summary

Introduction

Autografts came with some limitations, such as additional surgical intervention, low availability, morbidity, and loss of function of donor-site or mismatches in size. An alternative is represented by the largely available nerve allografts that do not lead to the morbidity of the donor site, they require administration of immunosuppressive treatment and present high costs. To overcome such drawbacks, decellularized allografts have been produced, while their main advantage is the preservation of the internal structure of the nerve. It has been reported that such scaffolds only support a limited range of dimensions: Small diameters (1–2 mm) and 30 cm length [2]

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