Scaffolds fabricated from polymers have imprinted its wide applicability in the field of tissue engineering. The surface of electrospun poly(lactic acid) (PLA) nanofibers was modified to improve their compatibility with living medium. PLA film were treated with alkali solution to introduce carboxyl groups on the surface followed by covalent grafting of gelatin using Xtal Fluoro-E as coupling agent. The gelatin g-PLA polymer synthesized via 'graft-onto' method exhibit fascinating properties as studied by contact angle measurement, fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, scanning electron microscopy, water vapor transmission rate(WVTR), swelling studies and differential scanning calorimetry. The fabricated gelatin g-PLA scaffolds were further characterized to conduct the study on hydrolytic degradation, and extent of biodegradation at ambient temperature. It was observed from the in-vitro analysis that the gelatin g-PLA nanofiber (with hemolytic percentage, 0.56 6 0.13%) was cytocompatible with fibroblast cell and does not impair cell growth. The WVTR obtained for the electrospun mat around 2900 6 100 g/m 2 . 24 h signifies the optimal moist environment required for tissue engineering especially wound healing. Notably, many of these strategies resulted in porous hydrophilic scaffolds with human cell growth and proliferation for medical applications of various types. V C 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018, 135, 46056.
INTRODCTIONPoly(L-lactic acid) (PLA) is one of the most important biodegradable, biocompatible, environment-friendly, and recyclable thermoplastic polyester with extensive biomedical applications. 1 However, due to the hydrophobic nature of the PLA, cell adhesion is not possible in a straight forward way. 2 The most convenient method to improve the cytocompatibility is by grafting PLA with some hydrophilic and bio-compatible components, such as chitosan, 3 gelatin, 4 alginate, 5 RGD peptide, 6 arginine, 7 lysine, PEG, 8 collagen and other extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. In order to increase the cytocompatibility of PLA, modifications can be done by several processes such as polymerization grafting, 9 oxygen plasma modification, 10 hydrolysis, 11 entrapment, 12 aminolysis, 13 and so on. The employment of ECM proteins or RGD peptide for surface coating of PLA is one of the facile and favorable method to achieve cytocompatibility. Alternatively, the feasibility of swollen PLA surface entrapped with bio macro-molecules, such as chitosan, gelatin, and poly(L-lysine) increases when exposed to the solvent/non-solvent mixture, where most of the solvents for PLA are nonbiocompatible.Alkaline hydrolysis is one of the efficient and common pretreatment method to create active functional group on PLA backbone. 14 Most promising outcome has been established on treatment of the natural fibers with alkaline solution (e.g., with 2% sodium hydroxide aqueous solution). The improvement in the surface hydrophilicity can be confirmed by the decreasing contact angle of ...