Guided Cell Attachment via Aligned Electrospinning of Glycopolymers

Abstract

The creation of biomaterials with aligned fibers offers broad applications in tissue regeneration, guiding cell organization and physiological cues, and providing appropriate mechanical properties for many biomedical applications. Herein, for the first time, highly aligned electrospun membranes are designed and developed using glycopolymers. The membranes retain the strong mechanical properties of polycaprolactone, and fiber alignment facilitates the creation of anisotropic mechanical properties, enabling failure stress to be manipulated by an order of magnitude relative to randomly ordered fibers. Biocompatibility and cell attachment in these materials are characterized using tenocytes as a cell model. Both random and aligned fiber glycopolymers show promising biocompatibility, but aligned glycopolymer fibers additionally offer patterning to guide cell organization. These materials potentially provide a novel platform for tissue regeneration studies, demonstrating that the sugar–lectin interaction can produce materials capable of managing cell guidance.

Porous biomaterials for tissue engineering: a review

“…The role of tissue microenvironments and the ECM have repeatedly been proven to be highly influential in guiding cell morphology, 307 attachment 308,309 ), proliferation, 310 and differentiation, 311 where minor changes in structure and surface chemistry (conductivity/charge) can allow for significant changes in cell behaviour. 312,313 Electrospinning has the capacity to produce nanometre-diameter fibres and may be able to mimic this microstructure and physical cues to promote differentiation and survival of surrounding cells.…”

Maskless Arrayed Nanofiber Mats by Bipolar Pyroelectrospinning

“…The ability to modulate the cellular behavior, such as adhesion and morphology, has been attracting a lot of interest for cell-patterning applications. ,− Here we demonstrate the possibility of using such arrayed mats for controlling the adhesion of live fibroblast cells in vitro (see the Experimental Section for details about the cells) according to the periodic array geometry. A PPLN crystal patterned with an arrayed mat of PDLLA was placed into a Petri dish and incubated with the cells at a density of 1 × 10 5 cells/mL for 24 h. The same cell density was seeded onto a conventional glass slide as control.…”

Bioinspired by cell membranes: functional polymeric materials for biomedical applications

“…223 They further fabricated these glycopolymers into highly aligned electrospun membranes to offer patterning to guide the cell organization for tissue regeneration. 224 Cell membrane coated materials may also be applied as tissue engineering scaffolds to promote the cell proliferation and their functions. For instance, Zhang et al coated polymeric nanofibers (a mixture of polycaprolactone and poly-lysine) with pancreatic beta cell membranes.…”