Hybrid PGS-PCL Microfibrous Scaffolds with Improved Mechanical and Biological Properties

摘要

Poly(glycerol sebacate) (PGS) is a biodegradable elastomer that has generated great interest as a scaffold material due to its desirable mechanical properties. However, the use of PGS in tissue engineering is limited by the difficulties to cast micro and nanofibrous structures due to high temperatures and vacuum required for its curing and limited solubility of the cured polymer. In this paper, we developed microfibrous scaffolds made from blends of PGS and poly (ε-caprolactone) (PCL) by using standard electrospinning set up. At a given PGS:PCL ratio, higher voltage resulted in significantly smaller fiber diameters (from ~ 4 μm to 2.8 μm, p < 0.05). Further increase in voltage resulted in the fusion of fibers. Similarly, higher PGS concentrations in the polymer blend resulted in significantly increased fiber diameter (p < 0.01). We further compared mechanical properties of electrospun PGS:PCL scaffolds with those made from PCL. Scaffolds with higher PGS concentration showed higher elastic modulus (EM), ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and ultimate elongation (UE) (p < 0.01) without the need for thermal curing or photocrosslinking. Biological evaluation of these scaffolds showed significantly improved HUVEC attachment and proliferation compared to PCL-only scaffolds (p < 0.05). Thus, we have demonstrated that simple blends of PGS prepolymer with PCL can be used to fabricate microfibrous scaffolds with mechanical properties in the range of human aortic valve leaflet.