HPV is known to be the causal agent in the majority of cervical cancers. However, the role of the cervical bacterial microbiome in cervical cancer is not clear. To investigate that possibility, we collected cervical cytobrush samples from 144 Tanzanian women and performed deep sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes. We found that HIV-positive patients had greater bacterial richness (P = 0.01) than HIV-negative patients. We also observed that women with high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (HSIL) had greater cervical bacterial diversity than women with cytologically normal cervices. Data from our precise sampling of cervical lesions leads us to propose that Mycoplasma contributes to a cervical microbiome status that promotes HPV-related cervical lesions. These results suggest a greater influence of the bacterial microbiota on the outcome of HPV infection than previously thought.

Gelatin-based nanofibrous scaffolds with a mean fiber diameter of 300 nm were prepared with and without micrometer-sized polyethylene glycol (PEG) fibers that served as sacrificial templates. Upon fabrication of the scaffolds via electrospinning, the gelatin fibers were crosslinked with glutaraldehyde, and the PEG templates were removed using tert-butanol to yield nanofibrous scaffolds with pore diameters ranging from 10 to 100 µm, as estimated with mercury intrusion porosimetry. Non-templated gelatin-based nanofibrous matrices had an average pore size of 1 µm. Fibroblasts were seeded onto both types of the gelatin-based nanfibrous surfaces and cultured for 14 days. For comparative purposes, chitosan-based and polyurethane (PU)-based macroporous scaffolds with pore sizes of 100 µm and 170 µm, respectively, also were included. The number of cells as a function of the depth into the scaffold was judged and quantitatively assessed using nuclei staining. Cell penetration up to a depth of 250 µm and 90 µm was noted in gelatin scaffolds prepared with sacrificial templates and gelatin-only nanofibrous scaffolds. Noticeably, scaffold preparation protocol presented here allowed the structural integrity to be maintained even with high template content (95 %) and can be easily extended towards other classes of electrospun polymer matrices for tissue engineering.