Murugan Ramalingam, Ramakrishna Seeram
NanoScience Technology Center, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida 32826, USA.
Tissue Eng. 2007 Aug;13(8):1845-66. doi: 10.1089/ten.2006.0078.
Tissue engineering is an emerging area of applied research with a goal of repairing or regenerating the functions of damaged tissue that fails to heal spontaneously by using cells and synthetic functional components called scaffolds. Scaffolds made of nanofibers (herein called "nano-fibrous scaffolds") play a key role in the success of tissue engineering by providing a structural support for the cells to accommodate and guiding their growth in the three-dimensional space into a specific tissue. The orientation of these fibers is considered as one of the important features of a perfect tissue scaffold, because the fiber orientation greatly influences cell growth and related functions. Therefore, engineering scaffolds with a control over fiber orientation is essential and a prerequisite for controlling cell orientation and tissue growth. Recent advances in electrospinning have made it possible to create nano-featured scaffolds with controlled fiber orientation. Electrospinning is a straightforward, cost-effective, and versatile method, which is recently applied in engineering well-defined nano-fibrous scaffolds that hold promise in serving as a synthetic extra-cellular matrix (ECM). This article reviews the current trends in electrospinning nano-fibrous scaffolds with fiber orientation. A detailed mechanism involved in the spinning process is discussed, followed by experimental examples that show how the fiber orientation influences cellular growth behavior. This review is expected to be useful for readers to gain knowledge on the state-of-the-art of scaffold engineering by electrospinning.
组织工程是一个新兴的应用研究领域，其目标是通过使用细胞和称为支架的合成功能组件来修复或再生无法自发愈合的受损组织的功能。由纳米纤维制成的支架（本文称为“纳米纤维支架”）通过为细胞提供结构支撑，使其在三维空间中生长并引导其生长成特定组织，从而在组织工程的成功中发挥关键作用。这些纤维的取向被认为是理想组织支架的重要特征之一，因为纤维取向极大地影响细胞生长和相关功能。因此，制造能够控制纤维取向的支架对于控制细胞取向和组织生长至关重要且是先决条件。静电纺丝技术的最新进展使得制造具有可控纤维取向的纳米特征支架成为可能。静电纺丝是一种直接、经济高效且通用的方法，最近被应用于制造定义明确的纳米纤维支架，这些支架有望作为合成细胞外基质（ECM）。本文综述了具有纤维取向的静电纺丝纳米纤维支架的当前趋势。讨论了纺丝过程中涉及的详细机制，随后给出了实验示例，展示了纤维取向如何影响细胞生长行为。预计这篇综述将有助于读者了解静电纺丝支架工程的最新技术水平。
