The predominant factor influencing cellular behavior on electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds: Wettability or surface morphology?

Abstract

Several cues, including wettability, surface morphology, and porosity, affect the cellular behaviors on nanofibrous scaffolds. However, a challenging task is determining the more influential parameter on cellular behaviors. Herein, we prepared two sets of polycaprolactone (PCL)-based electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds, viz. surface morphology-altered PCL (SMA PCL) scaffolds and hydrophilic PCL-chitosan scaffolds with different chitosan content. We further investigated the scaffolds' cell attachment and proliferation ability to determine which is a predominant factor, wettability, or surface morphology? Water contact angle and alternative current impedance analyses revealed that incorporating chitosan to PCL increased the wettability and dielectric properties. In contrast, alterations in surface morphology did not show any significant changes to the properties mentioned above of neat PCL. Different solvent compositions (CHCl3/DMSO) caused cylindrical and smooth PCL nanofiber to adopt porous, wristed, or flat fibrous structures. The fibroblasts cell studies revealed that both PCL-chitosan and SMA PCL scaffolds had similar cell proliferation profiles on day 1. However, the former scaffolds showed a statistically significant difference from the latter ones on days 3 and 5. In conclusion, we suggest that increasing the wettability of nanofibrous scaffolds is more influential in directing cellular behaviors than surface morphology modification.