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Effect of Electrospun Scaffold Fiber Alignment on Endothelial Cell Growth
Author(s) -
Hom Sarah,
O'Hara Joseph,
Yin Wei,
Rubenstein David
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.29.1_supplement.792.2
Subject(s) - scaffold , tissue engineering , chemistry , microbiology and biotechnology , connexin , viability assay , biophysics , biomedical engineering , materials science , cell , biochemistry , biology , gap junction , medicine , intracellular
Electrospinning is an efficient process for the fabrication of microvascular tissue engineering scaffolds. Topographical properties of scaffolds can regulate cell growth into network‐like structures. Thus, the goal of this work was to determine how scaffold fiber alignment and scaffold composition alters endothelial cell growth into de novo microvascular networks throughout the scaffold. We hypothesized that with a higher degree of alignment and a more mechanically robust substrate, more microvascular networks will be formed throughout the scaffold. To test this, we fabricated both random and aligned scaffolds from combinations of cellulose acetate, chitosan and PCL. Scaffold physical and mechanical properties were quantified. A time course for vascular network growth, endothelial cell viability/density, connexin‐43/caveolin‐1 expression, metabolic activity and inflammatory properties was obtained over 7 days. Our results show that longer culture durations on more aligned scaffolds promotes microvascular network growth better than with randomly aligned scaffolds or short culture durations. For most formulations the expression of connexin‐43 was significantly up‐regulated on aligned scaffolds and to some extent this connexin expression was co‐localized with caveolin expression. The metabolic activity of endothelial cells cultured with our various formulations was, in general, enhanced as compared with cells not incubated with scaffolds. Metabolic activity decreased as the alignment of scaffold fibers increased. These data suggest that the degree of scaffold fiber orientation can partially regulate microvascular network growth and that these scaffolds have the potential to be used in microvascular tissue engineering applications. Thanks to the NIH.