Micropatterned silk fibroin membranes for guided tissue regeneration

• Autor(a) principal: Pina, João Alexandre Gouvinhas de
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/31495
• topic: Tissue engineering; Guided tissue regeneration; Micropatterning; Biomaterials; Periodontal disease; Spinal cord injury; Engenharia de tecidos; Regeneração tecidual orientada; Micro padrões; Biomateriais; Doença periodontal; Lesão medular; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Médicas::Biotecnologia Médica

The role of tissue engineering in regenerative medicine has been evolving in the past decades, with biomedical technological developments allowing for an increasing number of medical applications. One of such developments has been to combine biomaterials with micropatterning techniques for guided tissue regeneration. In fact, studies have found that using biomaterials with micropatterned surfaces helps promoting cell growth and differentiation. Those results have generated high expectations regarding the treatment of worldwide impactful conditions such as spinal cord injury and periodontal disease. Regarding these progresses and potential, this thesis looked towards assessing the hypothesis of using micropatterned silk fibroin (SF) membranes for applications in guided tissue regeneration. The membranes were produced by solvent casting and micropatterning was made via soft lithography by combining both microcontact printing (μCP) and microfluidic patterning techniques. The first objective was to obtain a controlled micropatterned topography in the SF membranes. Then it was important to characterize the micropatterned materials (MP) and compare their behaviour to non-patterned materials. MP displayed lower wettability, higher thickness and yet behaved equally in terms of mechanical performance. Finally, human derived adipose stem cells (hASCs) and periodontal ligament cells (hPDLs) were seeded on the different membranes to compare their capacity for cell adhesion and organization. Results showed successful adhesion and viability of both cell types to the membrane samples, particularly, in hPDLs samples, although cell organization was not observed in neither samples.