Random and aligned electrospun gelatin nanofiber mats for human mesenchymal stem cells

摘要

The topography of electrospun nanofibers is thought to play a vital role in the differentiation of humanmesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) in tissue engineering. For the first time, we used pure gelatin tofabricate random and aligned electrospun gelatin nanofibers (EGNs) as the scaffold of hMSCs. Twopure gelatin samples were crosslinked by saturated glutaraldehyde (GTA) vapour. The crosslinkingsignificantly enhanced their tensile strength by approximately 4 times. Subsequently, hMSCs werecultured on both EGNs for 1, 3 and 7 days, and the cytotoxicity, morphologies and spreading of thecells were evaluated. The results indicate that hMSCs could proliferate on crosslinked EGNs and spreadmore effectively on the aligned fibrous mast. Specifically, the cells elongated better and orientedmore uniformly along the local aligned fiber direction than those grown on randomly oriented fibers.Therefore, this study implies that aligned EGNs have higher potential applications as the scaffold forhMSCs.