Abstract
Tubular scaffolds with aligned polylactic acid (PLA) fibres were fabricated for cell guide applications by immersing rolled PLA fibre mats into a polyvinyl acetate (PVAc) solution to bind the mats. The PVAc solution was also mixed with up to 30 wt % β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP) content. Cross-sectional images of the scaffold materials obtained via scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed the aligned fibre morphology along with a significant number of voids in between the bundles of fibres. The addition of β-TCP into the scaffolds played an important role in increasing the void content from 17.1% to 25.3% for the 30 wt % β-TCP loading, which was measured via micro-CT (µCT) analysis. Furthermore, µCT analyses revealed the distribution of aggregated β-TCP particles in between the various PLA fibre layers of the scaffold. The compressive modulus properties of the scaffolds increased from 66 MPa to 83 MPa and the compressive strength properties decreased from 67 MPa to 41 MPa for the 30 wt % β-TCP content scaffold. The scaffolds produced were observed to change into a soft and flexible form which demonstrated shape recovery properties after immersion in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) media at 37 °C for 24 h. The cytocompatibility studies (using MG-63 human osteosarcoma cell line) revealed preferential cell proliferation along the longitudinal direction of the fibres as compared to the control tissue culture plastic. The manufacturing process highlighted above reveals a simple process for inducing controlled cell alignment and varying porosity features within tubular scaffolds for potential tissue engineering applications.
Highlights
Porous scaffolds can play an important role in the regeneration of host tissue affected either by disease or trauma
scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images presented in Figure 1a–c revealed the lateral cross sectional morphology of the polylactic acid (PLA)
Tubular scaffolds were fabricated maintaining a well-aligned PLA fibrous morphology using a blend of polyvinyl acetate (PVAc) and β-tricalcium phosphate (β-Tissue culture plastic (TCP)), where PVAc acted as a binder and β-TCP improved the bioactivity of the scaffolds
Summary
Porous scaffolds can play an important role in the regeneration of host tissue affected either by disease or trauma These scaffold materials should ideally be biocompatible, biodegradable, bioactive and possess sufficient mechanical properties in order to maintain their three-dimensional integrity during the tissue healing process. Numerous bioresorbable materials, such as natural [1,2] and synthetic polymers [3,4], bioactive ceramics [5] and glasses [6,7,8] have been investigated extensively to fabricate solid foams [9,10,11], tubular foams [12,13,14,15] and oriented fibrous scaffolds [16,17,18] for tissue engineering applications. Tubular scaffolds have been manufactured from various types of biopolymers such as, polylactic acid (PLA), poly(ε-caprolactone)
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