Application of biocompatible human placental collagen in tissue engineering

Abstract

Collagen and collagen based biomaterials are extensively used in biomedical devices and tissue engineering. The living skin equivalent is also one of the advanced clinical applications in the field of tissue engineering. It is promising therapeutic options for surgical wounds, burns, donor sites or split thickness skin graft wounds and strong potential for manifold in vitro experiments. The human placental collagen solution was reconstituted and cross linked with chondroitin-6-sulfate at 37°C. The polymerized collagen gel was kept under UV light for drying. Finally the collagen membrane was washed with phosphate buffer to remove impurities and dried membrane used for fibroblast culture. The objective of this study is to produce cultured autologous and allograft to develop a dermal substitute for wound healing. For the development of dermal equivalent models, human dermal fibroblasts were seeded on a reconstituted placental collagen membrane and cultured for 7 days. It was found that the cells could grow and proliferate well in an extended shape on the surface of the collagen membrane. Fibroblasts show good adherence and retaining their normal morphology as indicated by microscopic analysis. Proliferation of fibroblast observed on this membrane affirms its non toxic nature and MTT assay proves proliferation of fibroblast is 2 times more in collagen membrane than tissue culture plates. The in vitro wound healing study shows the fibroblast migration to the wound area within 10 days to prove the model for in vivo wound healing. These studies contributes to the hypothesis that part of the healing efficacy is due to collagen for proliferation, migration of fibroblast for normal wound healing mechanism.