Evaluation of polyglycolic acid as an animal-free biomaterial for three-dimensional culture of human endometrial cells

Abstract

Objective: Animal-free scaffolds have emerged as a potential foundation for consistent, chemically defined, and low-cost materials. Because of its good potential for high biocompatibility with reproductive tissues and well-characterized scaffold design, we investigated whether polyglycolic acid (PGA) could be used as an animal-free scaffold instead of natural fibrin-agarose, which has been used successfully for three-dimensional human endometrial cell culture. Methods: Isolated primary endometrial cells was cultured on fibrin-agarose and PGA polymers and evaluated various design parameters, such as scaffold porosity and mean fiber diameter. Cytotoxicity, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and immunostaining experiments were conducted to examine cell activity on fabricated scaffolds. Results: The MTT assay and SEM results showed that endometrial cells grew and proliferated on both scaffolds. Immunostaining showed cytokeratin and vimentin expression in seeded cells after 7 days of culture. On both scaffolds, an epithelial arrangement of cultured cells was found on the top layer and stromal arrangement matrix on the bottom layer of the scaffolds. Therefore, fibrin-agarose and PGA scaffolds successfully mimicked the human endometrium in a way suitable for in vitro analysis.Conclusion: Both fibrin-agarose and PGA scaffolds could be used to simulate endometrial structures. However, because of environmental and ethical concerns and the low cost of synthetic polymers, we recommend using PGA as a synthetic polymer for scaffolding in research instead of natural biomaterials.

Development of Three-Dimensional (3D) Biodegradable Polyglycolic Acid Fiber (PGA) Preforms for Scaffold Applications: Experimental Patterning and Fiber Volume Fraction-Porosity Modeling Study

“…A three-dimensional (3D) poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid)(PLGA)/poly (e-caprolactone) (PCL) scaffold based on wet-electrospinning [56] that consisted of a very loose, dispersive, and randomly oriented porous fiber structure for cell population and differentiation [57], and eventually for the generation of osteochondral (bone) tissue, was developed via the endochondral approach [58]. Layered natural endometrial stromal cells were cultured in a 3D PGA electrospun scaffold in which an electrospun nanoweb was overlaid by a monolayer of endometrial epithelial cells, and it was found that the overall arrangement was identical to the native endometrium [59].…”