Electrospinning of Biomimetic and Bioactive Composite Nanofibers

Abstract

In the past few years, with electrospinning traditional synthetic polymers (e.g., PLA, PCL) have been frequently made into biomimetic nanofibrous tissue scaffolds. However, their inherent problems, i.e., poor cellular affinity and hydrophobicity, remain to be improved for having favorable cell-scaffold interactions. In this study, we propose to address the noted problems through developing composite nanofibers. With gelatin (collagen) and PCL as the representative polymers from the natural and synthetic sources respectively, we fabricated gelatin/PCL composite nanofibers by electrospinning of a blend, and core-shell composite nanofibers collagen-r-PCL through a novel coaxial electrospinning technique. Physical, mechanical, chemical and biological characterization illustrated their better hydrophilicity and cellular affinity than that of the synthetic counterpart, suggesting the applicability of these nanofibers for tissue scaffolding. Current materials compounding approaches by co-electrospinning of natural and synthetic polymers would be a facile and effective approach to fulfill the success of nanofibers as cellular scaffolds.