The present study reports the development of silk fibroin/polyvinyl alcohol scaffold conjugated with soluble eggshell membrane protein (SEP) to improve the mechanical and cell supportive properties for tissue regeneration. SEP-SF/PVA scaffold has shown better surface property, desired pores (230-360 pm) interconnected network and compressive strength (247.5 ± 23.7 KPa). The existence of SEP on the scaffold surface and the structural and thermal stability were confirmed by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, and thermogravimetric analysis. In vitro cell culture study has shown superior cell supportive property compared to non-conjugated counterpart. The cyto-compatibility of SEP conjugated scaffold was further confirmed by in-vivo testing in mice model. Overall, the study demonstrates that SEP can be used as an excellent surface property enhancer for silk fibroin based scaffolds thereby make them potential artificial extracellular matrix for tissue engineering applications. Figure: SEM of cell-scaffold construct for SF/PVA (a,c,e,g) and SEP-ISF/PVA) (b,d,f,h) scaffold for day 1 (a,b), day 3 (c,d), day 7(e,f) and day 14 (g, h) with umbilical cord blood derived hMSCs.
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