Articular cartilage defects resulting from injury, aging and degenerative diseases cause severe joint pain and impaired mobility. The inefficiency of the current therapies in generating native-like functional tissue together with the poor self-healing capacity of the articular cartilage has increased the interest for tissue engineering approaches combining stem cells, biomaterial scaffolds and environmental cues. Electrospinning is a promising technology for cartilage tissue engineering applications due to its ability to produce scaffolds that mimic the native nanofibrous structure of the extracellular matrix, such as the size and alignment of collagen fibers in the superficial layer of articular cartilage. Additionally, coaxial electrospinning offers the decisive advantage of allowing for the encapsulation and controlled delivery of bioactive compounds important to promote cell’s growth and chondrogenic differentiation. In this work, aligned and porous core-shell nanofibers constituted by biodegradable and biocompatible synthetic materials (core: Poly (glycerol sebacate) (PGS)/ shell: Poly (ε-caprolactone) (PCL)) were produced by wet-dry electrospinning. The morphology and core-shell structure of the electrospun mats were assessed by SEM and TEM. PGS/PCL scaffolds were also characterized in terms of their mechanical properties, degradation kinetics and biological performance when cultured with human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hBMSC). In overall, the tunable mechanical and degradation properties of PGS/PCL core-shell nanofibers combined with their ability of supporting hBMSC proliferation and chondrogenic differentiation are highly promising for applications in articular cartilage repair.

Biodegradable aligned core-shell nanofibers for articular cartilage tissue engineering

254th National Meeting (2017)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.