Evaluation of the Morphology and Biocompatibility of Natural Silk Fibers/Agar Blend Scaffolds for Tissue Regeneration

Abstract

This study was aimed to develop a tissue engineering scaffold by incorporation of Bombyx mori silk fiber (BMSF) and agar. This promised the improvement in enhancing their advantageous properties as well as limiting their defects without occurring chemical reactions or crosslink formation. The morphology and chemical structure of scaffolds were observed using scanning electron microscope (SEM) observation and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectra. The SEM results show that scaffolds containing BMSF have microporous structures, which are suitable for cell adhesion. Agar scaffolds, by contrast, had much more flat morphology. FT-IR spectra confirm that no modifications to BMSF happened in scaffolds, which indicates that there was no chemical reaction or crosslink formation between silk and agar in this process. Furthermore, the biocompatibility of scaffolds was performed in the mouse's subcutaneous part of the dorsal region for 15 days, followed by Haematoxylin and Eosin (H&E) staining. H&E staining results demonstrate that scaffolds had good biocompatibility and there was no sign of the body rejection in all of samples. The results from animal study show that SA scaffolds have the most stable structure for cell adhesion compared with those single materials.

Progress in Modern Marine Biomaterials Research

“…Agar scaffolds preparation for tissue engineering was also reported: "0.02% agar was soaked in distilled water for 30 min at room temperature and then boiled to 80 • C with stirring for 2 h until it completely turned into a transparent homogeneous solution. The agar solution was poured into a mold and cooled to room temperature" [212]. The development of agar-based bioaerogels [213] and membranes [214] has also been described.…”

Antimicrobial finishing of polypropylene fabric using bioactive nanogels

“…[21] Similarly, a new hydrogel made of hyaluronan, poly (vinyl phosphonic acid), and chitosan were fabricated and characterized to be used for skin wound healing applications. [22] A novel nanohybrid scaffold has been prepared by incorporating curcumin in chitosan nanoparticles to improve stability and solubility, then impregnating prepared curcumin-chitosan nanoparticles into collagen scaffold (nanohybrid scaffold) for better tissue regeneration application. [23] Transformation of CS into nanogel offers a high surface area for a pronounced enhancement in bioactivity.…”

Preparation and evaluation of gellan gum hydrogel reinforced with silk fibers with enhanced mechanical and biological properties for cartilage tissue engineering

“…In recent years, SF have been used to reinforce the mechanical properties of scaffolds due to its high mechanical properties, biocompatibility, and easy process of manufacturing with no special equipment (Tonsomboon et al, 2017;Wood et al, 2016), and it has been known that SF can play an effective role by reinforcing and greatly improving mechanical properties of scaffold (Han et al, 2006). Although previous papers have reported on the preparation of reinforced scaffolds using SF (Chen et al, 2017;Gupta et al, 2016;Mandal et al, 2012;Wöltje et al, 2020) only a few cases of application to hydrogel are reported (Thu-Hien et al, 2018;Yodmuang et al, 2015) and the size of the SF is broad.…”