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It describes selected technical developments in electrospinning related to the production of non-woven fiber scaffolds and their implications in the design of artificial tissue structures. Specifically, it describes techniques for the production of aligned fiber structures, multilayered, multiscaled and multifiber scaffolds, fiber modification and functionalization, and useful advances in process control. It also presents technical sketches showing in detail how to implement the techniques presented into electrospinning equipment setups. Finally, it discusses remaining limitations that pertain to the design of scaffold materials.

Electrospun polymeric micro-and nanofibers offer the opportunity to reproduce the filamentous structure of the extracellular matrix in native tissues. The ability to electrospin extracellular matrix proteins offers the additional benefit of being able to create a chemical and structural microenvironment for cells in order to influence their behavior during scaffold seeding and tissue formation. This offers significant advantages over unspecific protein adsorption or functionalisation with adhesion promoting peptide sequences.However, producing electrospun fibers from pure protein solutions remains difficult and costly. A more accessible approach is to introduce proteins into electrospun fibers by blending synthetic polymer solutions with selected extracellular matrix proteins. The correct choice of polymer also makes the usage of toxic and denaturing solvents unnecessary. In this study we have investigated the production process for and the suitability of protein/PEO fibers, specifically collagen I/PEO, as cell culture substrates.

Fiber scaffolds of bioactive polysialic acid have been prepared via electrospinning for peripheral nerve regeneration. The diameter, morphology and alignment of fibers in scaffolds were adjusted by variation of electrospinning parameters, which are decisive for the cell-scaffold interaction. Due to the high water solubility of polysialic acid (poly-alpha-2,8-N-acetylneuraminic acid) a photoactive derivative (poly-alpha-2,8-N-pentenoylneuraminic acid) was used to obtain stable fiber scaffolds in water by photochemical crosslinking. At the optimized fiber scaffolds good cell viability and directed cell proliferation along the fibers was achieved by cell tests with immortalized Schwann cells.

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