Structure and properties of slow-resorbing nanofibers obtained by (co-axial) electrospinning as tissue scaffolds in regenerative medicine

Abstract

With the rapid advancement of regenerative medicine technologies, there is an urgent need for the development of new, cell-friendly techniques for obtaining nanofibers—the raw material for an artificial extracellular matrix production. We investigated the structure and properties of PCL10nanofibers, PCL5/PCL10core-shell type nanofibers, as well as PCL5/PCLAgnanofibres prepared by electrospinning. For the production of the fiber variants, a 5–10% solution of polycaprolactone (PCL) (Mw= 70,000–90,000), dissolved in a mixture of formic acid and acetic acid at a ratio of 70:30 m/m was used. In order to obtain fibers containing PCLAg1% of silver nanoparticles was added. The electrospin was conducted using the above-described solutions at the electrostatic field. The subsequent bio-analysis shows that synthesis of core-shell nanofibers PCL5/PCL10, and the silver-doped variant nanofiber core shell PCL5/PCLAg, by using organic acids as solvents, is a robust technique. Furthermore, the incorporation of silver nanoparticles into PCL5/PCLAgmakes such nanofibers toxic to model microbes without compromising its biocompatibility. Nanofibers obtained such way may then be used in regenerative medicine, for the preparation of extracellular scaffolds: (i) for controlled bone regeneration due to the long decay time of the PCL, (ii) as bioscaffolds for generation of other types of artificial tissues, (iii) and as carriers of nanocapsules for local drug delivery. Furthermore, the used solvents are significantly less toxic than the solvents for polycaprolactone currently commonly used in electrospin, like for example chloroform (CHCl3), methanol (CH3OH), dimethylformamide (C3H7NO) or tetrahydrofuran (C4H8O), hence the presented here electrospin technique may allow for the production of multilayer nanofibres more suitable for the use in medical field.