Random and aligned electrospun gelatin nanofiber mats for human mesenchymal stem cells

Abstract

The topography of electrospun nanofibers is thought to play a vital role in the differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) in tissue engineering. For the first time, we used pure gelatin to fabricate random and aligned electrospun gelatin nanofibers (EGNs) as the scaffold of hMSCs. Two pure gelatin samples were crosslinked by saturated glutaraldehyde (GTA) vapour. The crosslinking significantly enhanced their tensile strength by approximately 4 times. Subsequently, hMSCs were cultured on both EGNs for 1, 3 and 7 days, and the cytotoxicity, morphologies and spreading of the cells were evaluated. The results indicate that hMSCs could proliferate on crosslinked EGNs and spread more effectively on the aligned fibrous mast. Specifically, the cells elongated better and oriented more uniformly along the local aligned fiber direction than those grown on randomly oriented fibers. Therefore, this study implies that aligned EGNs have higher potential applications as the scaffold for hMSCs.