Open AccessNovel approach for the assessment of ovarian follicles infiltration in polymeric electrospun patterned scaffolds
Author(s) -
Nathalie Raffel,
Ralf Dittrich,
Tobias Bäuerle,
Lisa Seyler,
Amir Fattahi,
Inge Hoffmann,
Aldo LealEgaña,
Matthias W. Beckmann,
Aldo R. Boccaccını,
Liliana Liverani
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0215985
Subject(s) - scaffold , tissue engineering , biomedical engineering , infiltration (hvac) , magnetic resonance imaging , ovarian tissue , materials science , computer science , nanotechnology , medicine , ovary , radiology , composite material
Reproductive tissue engineering (REPROTEN) has been recently defined as the application of the tissue engineering approach targeting reproductive organs and several research works are focusing on this novel strategy. Being still an innovative field, most of the scaffold characterization techniques suitable for other tissue targets give inappropriate results, and there is the need to evaluate and investigate novel approaches. In particular the focus of this paper is the evaluation of the infiltration of ovarian follicles inside patterned electrospun scaffolds. Beyond the standard techniques, for the first time the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for this purpose is proposed and specific protocols for scaffold preparation are reported. Positive results in terms of evaluation of scaffolds incorporating follicles confirm this technique as highly effective for further applications in this field.