Vascular Tissue Engineering: Effects of Integrating Collagen into a PCL Based Nanofiber Material

الملخص EN

The engineering of vascular grafts is a growing field in regenerative medicine.

Although numerous attempts have been made, the current vascular grafts made of polyurethane (PU), Dacron®, or Teflon® still display unsatisfying results.

Electrospinning of biopolymers and native proteins has been in the focus of research to imitate the extracellular matrix (ECM) of vessels to produce a small caliber, off-the-shelf tissue engineered vascular graft (TEVG) as a substitute for poorly performing PU, Dacron, or Teflon prostheses.

Blended poly-ε-caprolactone (PCL)/collagen grafts have shown promising results regarding biomechanical and cell supporting features.

In order to find a suitable PCL/collagen blend, we fabricated plane electrospun PCL scaffolds using various collagen type I concentrations ranging from 5% to 75%.

We analyzed biocompatibility and morphological aspects in vitro.

Our results show beneficial features of collagen I integration regarding cell viability and functionality, but also adverse effects like the loss of a confluent monolayer at high concentrations of collagen.

Furthermore, electrospun PCL scaffolds containing 25% collagen I seem to be ideal for engineering vascular grafts.