Page 93 - Tailoring Electrospinning Techniques for Regenerative Medicine - Marc Simonet

TAILORING THE VOID SPACE AND MECHANICAL PROPERTIES IN ELECTROSPUN SCAFFOLDS
Figure 4.9 Cell ingrowth into the PCL sca olds with a fiber diameter of 0.9 μm (a) conventional electrospun (b) low temperature electrospun.
Cells visualized with DAPI staining (white spots), sca old with polarized light (greyish hatching). 4
4.5 Conclusions 4.6 Acknowledgements
We have demonstrated that low-temperature electrospinning is a robust technique that can be used to produce ultra-porous three-dimensional sca olds. LTE provides a straight-forward and elegant method to increase and control the void spaces within electrospun sca olds by embedding ice crystals from the surrounding air and adjusting the sti ness of the sca old fibers. These large fully interconnected voids resulted in improved cell infiltration into the sca old. Within the LTE process, the choice of material and the fiber diameter can be adjusted to tailor the sca old properties in terms of porosity, void space and sti ness towards the physiological ranges of the targeted tissue.
The authors want to thank Bert van Rietbergen for his assistance with the distance transform analyses. Also we like to thank Emanuela Fioretta and Marina van Doeselaar for the assistance with the cell study. This work was financially supported by the Marie Curie Fellowship EIF-Panel: ENG-N 040565-AMTex.
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