Facile Strategy on Hydrophilic Modification of Poly(ε-caprolactone) Scaffolds for Assisting Tissue-Engineered Meniscus Constructs In Vitro.

Zhu-Xing Zhou,Jia-Kuo Yu,Zi-Mu Mao,Fu-Zhen Yuan,You-Rong Chen,Ji-Ying Zhang,Wen-Bo Jiang,Xing Wang,Dong Jiang,Fei Yang

doi:10.3389/fphar.2020.00471

Abstract

Poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) derived scaffolds have been extensively explored in the field of tissue-engineered meniscus (TEM) originating from their good biosafety and biomechanical properties. However, the poor intrinsic hydrophobicity severely hindered their wide applications for the scaffold-assisted tissue regeneration. Herein, we developed a simple strategy on surface modification of three-dimensional (3D) PCL scaffolds via a simply soaking treatment of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solutions to increase the hydrophilicity and roughness of scaffolds' surfaces. We investigated the effect of hydrolysis degree mediated by NaOH solutions on mechanical properties of 3D scaffolds, considering the importance of scaffolds' resistance to internal force. We also investigated and analyzed the biological performances of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) and meniscal fibrocartilage cells (MFCs) onto the scaffolds treated or untreated by NaOH solutions. The results indicated that hydrophilic modification could improve the proliferation and attachment of cells on the scaffolds. After careful screening process condition, structural fabrication, and performance optimization, these modified PCL scaffolds possessed roughened surfaces with inherent hierarchical pores, enhanced hydrophilicity and preferable biological performances, thus exhibiting the favorable advantages on the proliferation and adhesion of seeded cells for TEM. Therefore, this feasible hydrophilic modification method is not only beneficial to promote smarter biomedical scaffold materials but also show great application prospect in tissue engineering meniscus with tunable architectures and desired functionalities.

Highlights

Traumatic meniscal disorder is one of the most common types of orthopedic injuries in many people of all ages (Beals et al, 2016)
The 3D PCL scaffold was printed by fused deposition modeling (FDM) technique with 30 mm×30 mm×2.5 mm, and trimmed into cylindrical test samples with a 6-mm diameter corneal trephine respectively for the following experiments
We analyzed the distribution of pore size and road width and found that the mean pore sizes of scaffolds were 236.5 μm ± 23.8 μm with the arrangement from 146.7–300.0 μm while the mean road widths were 338.1 μm ± 11.6 μm with the arrangement from 306.7–370.9 μm (Figures 2C, D)

Summary

Introduction

Traumatic meniscal disorder is one of the most common types of orthopedic injuries in many people of all ages (Beals et al, 2016). In the past few decades, a number of recent studies evaluated and published the results of biocompatibilities, biomechanical properties, and replacing functions of synthetic materials for TEM (Hannink et al, 2011; Verdonk et al, 2011; Esposito et al, 2013; Lee et al, 2014; Kwak et al, 2017; Moradi et al, 2017) In those materials, poly(e-caprolactone) (PCL), as one of the aliphatic polyesters, possesses thermal plasticity and shapeability that can be molded into different three-dimensional (3D) scaffolds with designed geometric shape, degrading into nontoxic products after implantation into host (Oh et al, 2007; Zhang et al, 2017). PCL-based TEM attracts wide attention and exhibits a promising prospect to realize meniscal regeneration and therapeutic potential of TEM applications

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Results

Conclusion