Page 20 - Tailoring Electrospinning Techniques for Regenerative Medicine - Marc Simonet

Chapter 1
Table 1.1 Sca old demands and characteristics.
Sca old demand
Structural blueprint
Mechanical and functional compliance Cell infiltration
Tissue formation Nutrition exchange
Appropriate degradation
Adjustable sca old characteristics
3D shape Porosity
Pore size Interconnectivity Fiber morphology Fiber dimension Fiber roughness
Stress strain behavior Fatigue
Creep
Porosity
Pore size Interconnectivity Bioactivity
Bioactivity
Porosity
Pore size Interconnectivity
Fiber diameter
Fiber surface area
Material combinations Built in degradation trigger
1.2 Introduction to electrospinning and aim of the thesis
Electrospinning has gained widespread interest to produce such ECM mimicking sca olds for tissue engineering. This technique o en was and still is the preferred choice due to its capability to produce fibrous ECM lookalike sca olds, with similar nano- to micrometer length scales (see Figure 1.2). This, combined with its relatively low equipment costsa, process simplicity and versatility, has led to
approximately 37000 scientific publications and 5250 patentsb about electrospinning.
This thesis aims at developing optimized sca olds for tissue engineering by using and improving electrospinningtechniques.Thefollowingparagraphs focus on electrospinning and provide insight in how sca old characteristics as shown in Table 1.1 can be achieved by means of electrospinning.
a A small R&D equipment can be purchased for ~1000€
b Cut o date 23.08.2015, source scopus with keyword electrospinning
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