Production of electrospun nanofibers for tissue engineering and other biotechno...

• Author(s): Correia, Tiago Ruivo
• Date: 2012
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/1119
• Origin: Ubi Thesis - Conhecimento Online
• Subject(s): Nanofibras - Produção - Aplicações; Nanofibras - Engenharia de tecidos; Nanofibras - Aplicações biotecnológicas; Electrospinning; Membranas de nanofibras; Revestimento de scaffolds
• Document Type: Master Thesis
• Language: English

Description

As a specialized and complex structure, bone is a tissue with the capacity to self-regenerate that play different functions in our body. However, when there is a critical bone defect the self-regenerative capacity is lost. Currently clinical treatments are based on bone grafts and other bone substitutes which possess several limitations. Hereupon, Tissue Engineering arises as a new scientific field that combines life sciences and engineering knowledges to create biological substitutes capable of restoring defects and lesions of biological tissues. In this context, a new strategy to mimic the extracellular matrix of bone and cellular microenvironment was developed in this work. Therefore, the electrospinning apparatus was used to produce poly(ε-caprolactone), polyethylene oxide-sodium alginate and poly(vinyl)pirrolidone nanofibers. Subsequently, the same procedure was used for coating the alginate aggregated microparticle scaffold. In addition, polycaprolactone electrospun nanofiber membranes were also produced in order to improve the mechanisms on phase separation area. These membranes were subjected to a coating process in order to improve specific properties, such as pore size, fibers diameter and surface interactions. The biological properties of the coated scaffolds were evaluated through in vitro cytotoxicity assays. The results showed that all the coated scaffolds had their biological performance improved when compared to the same scaffolds without coating. The membranes showed to be useful for the separation of biomolecules.