Scaffolds fibrosos e anisotrópicos para aplicação de tecidos da cartilagem

• Autor(a) principal: Nóbrega, Ana João
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/25794
• topic: Electrospinning; Scaffolds; Polycaprolactone; Hydrogel; Cartilage; Tissue engineering

The major challenge associated with tissue engineered cartilage is the difficulty to recreate the organization of the natural fibrous network of the cartilaginous tissue, in order to simulate the mechanical properties of the natural tissue and, therefore, optimize cellular response. The importance of the arcade-like collagen structure for the load-bearing properties of native cartilage is well emphasized in literature. However, despite extensive cartilage tissue engineering research; few studies have assessed the importance of collagen fibril depth orientation. During this study, it is proposed an innovative 3D fibrous scaffold with distinct biomimetic zones, which were then incorporated into two different types of hydrogels in order to build the final structure. The produced scaffolds were later on freeze-dried, to enhance the porous network of the structure, whereas the hydrogel will increase the celluar response to the scaffold. The scaffold was produced by the assembly of electrospun PCL fibres where the different orientations were managed by varying the electrospinning conditions in use. Results show that that each electrospun PCL zone shows analogous architecture and topography relatively to its native counterpart due to the accurate modulation of the fibre orientation via electrospinning