Constitution and in vivo test of micro-porous tubular scaffold for esophageal tissue engineering

Abstract

Current clinical techniques in treating long-gap esophageal defects often lead to complications and high morbidity. Aiming at long-gap synthetic esophageal substitute, we had synthesized a biodegradable copolymer, poly(L-lactide-co-caprolactone) (PLLC), with low glass transition temperature. In this work, we developed a tubular PLLC porous scaffold using a self-designed tubular mold and thermal induced phase separation (TIPS) method. In order to enhance the interaction between tissue and scaffold, fibrin, a natural fibrous protein derived from blood fibrinogen, was coated on the scaffold circumferential surface. The fibrin density was measured to be 1.23 ± 0.04 mg/cm2. Primary epithelial cell culture demonstrated the improved in vitro biocompatibility. In animal study with partial scaffold implantation, in situ mucosa regeneration was observed along the degradation of the scaffold. These indicate that fibrin incorporated PLLC scaffold can greatly improve epithelial regeneration in esophagus repair, therefore serve as a good candidate for long-term evaluation of post-implantation at excision site.