Development of an experiment plan with an electrospinning equipment for cartilage tissue engineering

• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Eduarda Manuela Marantes Pereira da
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/31313
• topic: Electrospinning equipment; Tissue engineering; Nanofibre alignment; Cartilage; Biofabrication; Design of experiments; Scaffolds; Biomechanics

This dissertation had as main objective the implementation of an experiment plan for an automated electrospinning system in the field of Tissue Engineering, with main focus on cartilage tissue, as well as the development of a tool capable of predicting the dimensional characteristics of the tissue mesh, depending on the controllable input parameters of the system. In an initial stage, the main structural features of the cartilage tissue, as well as its components and biomechanics. In a second stage, information about the various biofabrication technologies applied to tissue engineering was compiled, focusing primarily on the electrospinning process and the referent techniques used to control the orientation of the fibres. Further ahead, having as base the functioning of the automated electrospinning system, the design of experiments (DoE) was created. For the DoE, three input factors were considered, them being the flow rate, the velocity of the collector bands and the linear velocity of the deposition table. The output variables of the resulting electrospun fibres were the fibre diameter, the space between the fibres and the size of the pores. For each input factor, two levels were considered (low and high), which originated a 2-level factorial design with a total of 2 3 experiments to be conducted. It was used replication in the DoE in order to achieve better results, so the total number of trials realised was sixteen, and the polymer used was PCL/Gelatin.The fibre meshes generated for each experiment were then submitted to a scanning electron microscope (SEM), and the output variables were quantified. The dimensional results of the meshes were statistically analysed (ANOVA), the effects of each parameter, and the interaction between them was determined, as well as its statistical significance. Complementary to this, an equation was developed in order to predict the output variables’ dimensions with respect to the input variables. This equation was then compared with both the experimental results and the theoretical model previously defined. In conclusion, the three input factors showed significant influence on the space between the fibres and the pore size. However, it is possible to verify that the velocity of the deposition table has a much higher effect on the space between the fibres than the velocity of the collector bands and the flow rate. It is also verified that there’s a significance interaction between most of the input factors in both the space between the fibres and the pore size.