preparation and characterization of electrospun scaffold based on chitosan and gelatin for tissue engineering applications.

Amir Salati,1,* Hamid keshvari,2

1. Tissue Engineering and Applied Cell Sciences Group, School of medicine, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Semnan, Iran.
2. Biomedical Engineering Department, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

Abstract


Introduction

Electrospinning has been one of the simple, effective and versatile processes to fabricate continuous nanofibers from kinds of polymers for tissue engineering applications.

Methods

In this study, nanofibers were electrospun from chitosan and gelatin at several blends (chitosan/gelatin: 80/20, 60/40, 50/50, 40/60, 20/80) with different processing parameters (voltage, flow rate and distance between the tip of the needle and collector). fourier transform infrared (ftir), scanning electron microscopy (sem), in vitro degradation and tensile test were utilized to evaluate scaffolds.

Results

The samples with 20% chitosan and 80% gelatin under special processing conditions (flow rate: 0.1 ml/h, voltage: 12 kv and distance: 16 cm) had the least amount of droplets and beads. tensile mechanical test showed that the crosslinked nanofiber scaffold with 20% chitosan and 80% gelatin is the best choice when mechanical properties are required. in addition, the crosslinked scaffolds with 20% chitosan and 80% gelatin and 50% chitosan and 50% gelatin had the least and most amount of degradation respectively.

Conclusion

The nanofibers has appropriate biocompatibility as a scaffold for tissue engineering applications and it can be used in various studies as an good substrate for cell seeding.

Keywords

Nanomaterials, electrospinning, tissue engineering, chitosan, gelatin.