Three dimensional spongy fibroin scaffolds containing keratin/vanillin particles as an antibacterial skin tissue engineering scaffold

Abstract

Despite major progress in the field of skin tissue engineering and wound care products, reconstruction of skin defects still represents a significant challenge associated with impaired healing and wound infection. In the present study, a novel antibacterial 3 D spongy fibroin-based skin tissue engineering scaffold incorporated with vanillin-loaded keratin particles was fabricated through a freeze-drying process. The obtained scaffolds offered a well-connected porous structure with a pore size of higher than 100 nm, a high water uptake capacity (>700%) and slow in vitro degradation over 60 days, and drug release profile indicated a prolonged vanillin release up to 14 days from the scaffolds. Furthermore, anti-bacterial and in vitro cell experiments demonstrated a bactericidal activity by incorporating vanillin into the scaffolds, besides excellent cell attachment and cytocompatibility at lower vanillin concentrations (1, 5 and 10 mM, FKV1, FKV5 and FKV10, respectively); however, a significant cytotoxicity was observed at elevated vanillin concentration (20 mM, FKV20). Hence, these findings indicate that local delivery of incorporated vanillin within fibroin-based scaffolds presents promising potential for improving anti-bacterial biomaterials for skin tissue engineering.