Abstract
ABSTRACTCardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality worldwide. Therefore, new research strategies for the treatment of cardiovascular disease are required. Previously, extracellular matrices (ECMs) have been used alongside polymers to generate hybrid bioscaffolds. Herein, we propose combining aortic ECMs with a polycaprolactone electrospun scaffold and biomechanically evaluating the scaffolds. We electrospun three scaffolds with varying ECM concentrations and found that increasing the ECM concentration leads to decreased stiffness at low strains, increased elasticity at high strain, reduction in failure strain, and an increase in yield strength. We also noted a decrease in water droplet contact angle with the increasing ECM concentration. Furthermore, we found that all three scaffolds were capable of maintaining human umbilical vein endothelial cell attachment and survival. These findings show the wide spectrum of mechanical properties that can be achieved through the addition of different concentrations of ECM into the fibers. © 2019 The Authors. Journal of Applied Polymer Science published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019, 136, 48181.
Highlights
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is Europe’s biggest killer, causing 3.9 million deaths in 2017, accounting for 45% of all deaths.[1]
No significant differences in average fiber diameter were noted across the three scaffolds, with diameters ranging from 0.90 Æ 0.19 μm for the 1% aorta extracellular matrices (ECMs) scaffold to 0.97 Æ 0.19 μm for the PCL-only scaffold (Figure 4)
We noted that including ECM reduced stiffness and increased compliance at lower strains and increased the elasticity of the nanofibers beyond its yield strength
Summary
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is Europe’s biggest killer, causing 3.9 million deaths in 2017, accounting for 45% of all deaths.[1]. It is possible through electrospinning to include bioactive cues into a repeatable polymer structure and alter its mechanical and physical properties.[5,6,7,11] This has huge implications in tissue engineering where mimicking the physical and biological properties of the native ECM are major research focusses, especially when the final aim is generation of new functional tissue
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