Comparative study of aligned and nonaligned poly(ε‐caprolactone) fibrous scaffolds prepared by solution blow spinning

Abstract

Fibrous scaffolds have become popular in tissue engineering (TE) due to their morphological resemblance to extracellular matrix components. While electrospinning is the most common technique in the field, solution blow spinning is an emerging technique with great potential. One of its many advantages is that it can produce aligned fibers with a very simple experimental setup. This work aimed to fabricate poly(ε‐caprolactone) mats with aligned fibers and compare them to nonaligned ones. For that, samples were produced using three rotational speeds of a cylindrical collector and characterized in terms of fiber alignment and diameter, mechanical properties, wettability, and biological response. Results showed that with a static collector, fibers were randomly deposited and nonaligned. As the speed was increased, the fibers began to align (as proven by image analysis), resulting in a change in mechanical behavior, but no differences in fiber diameter. Cells cultured on aligned samples were more elongated, and a higher alignment degree seemed to favor cellular growth. The results confirmed the potential of this up‐and‐coming technique to produce aligned fibers for TE. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater 107B: 1462–1470, 2019.

Solution Blow Spinning of Polycaprolactone—Rheological Determination of Spinnability and the Effect of Processing Conditions on Fiber Diameter and Alignment

“…Fiber diameter was also found to linearly depend on zero shear rate viscosity [40] (Figure 6), with R 2 = 0.95 for the linear fit of the data. No significant influence of collector rotational speed on average fiber diameter was found, as shown in Figure 7, which is also consistent with the literature [30]. Locally estimated scatterplot smoothing (LOESS) [71], a non-parametric regression method, was used in data surface fitting (R 2 = 0.9).…”

“…In contrast, electrospinning relies on a high voltage difference between the target and the polymer outlet [28,29]. Even though the SBS method is promising in its potential for significantly more rapid fiber production rates [30,31] and a wider range of available polymer-solvent systems, comprehensive research still needs to be conducted to establish the relationships between processing parameters and the fibrous material structure [27,32].…”

In vitro Evaluation of PHBV/PCL Blends for Bone Tissue Engineering

“…Taken together, the data indicate a good cytochemical performance of the cells on the polymers. Comparative data were recently presented on fibrous PCL materials 26 or PLLA/ PCL blends 27 . However, the 50:50 blend seemed to show inferior results to the other polymers studied.…”

Fabricação e caracterização de um protótipo de arcabouço para engenharia tecidual de válvulas cardíacas

“…No que diz respeito às propriedades mecânicas das mantas fibrosas, quando o alvo (coletor) não possui movimento rotativo, as fibras são depositadas de forma aleatória e tendem a apresentar um comportamento próximo ao isotrópico (127), como observado para as amostras não esterilizadas. Nas amostras esterilizadas, no entanto, uma das direções apresentou um comportamento diferente.…”

“…O esperado é que, apesar da degradação do polímero, a estrutura se torne mais resistente devido à formação e organização da MEC. Devese ressaltar que, futuramente, caso a anisotropia seja considerada fundamental ou caso se deseje mudar a abordagem do trabalho, já foi comprovado que é possível produzir fibras alinhadas com a técnica de FSS, e seria necessário somente uma adaptação na metodologia (127).…”