Department of Chemical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, ROC.
Acta Biomater. 2013 Mar;9(3):5562-72. doi: 10.1016/j.actbio.2012.10.024. Epub 2012 Oct 23.
Recent trends in scaffold design have focused on materials that can provide appropriate guidance cues for particular cell types to modulate cell behavior. In this study highly aligned and electrically conductive nanofibers that can simultaneously provide topographical and electrical cues for cells were developed. Thereafter their potential to serve as functional scaffolds for skeletal muscle tissue engineering was investigated. Well-ordered nanofibers, composed of polyaniline (PANi) and poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL), were electrospun by introducing an external magnetic field in the collector region. Incorporation of PANi into PCL fibers significantly increased the electrical conductivity from a non-detectable level for the pure PCL fibers to 63.6±6.6mS cm(-1) for the fibers containing 3wt.% PANi (PCL/PANi-3). To investigate the synergistic effects of topographical and electrical cues using the electrospun scaffolds on skeletal myoblast differentiation, mouse C2C12 myoblasts were cultured on random PCL (R-PCL), aligned PCL (A-PCL), random PCL/PANi-3 (R-PCL/PANi) and aligned PCL/PANi-3 (A-PCL/PANi) nanofibers. Our results showed that the aligned nanofibers (A-PCL and A-PCL/PANi) could guide myoblast orientation and promote myotube formation (i.e. approximately 40% and 80% increases in myotube numbers) compared with R-PCL scaffolds. In addition, electrically conductive A-PCL/PANi nanofibers further enhanced myotube maturation (i.e. approximately 30% and 23% or 15% and 18% increases in the fusion and maturation indices) compared with non-conductive A-PCL scaffolds or R-PCL/PANi. These results demonstrated that a combined effect of both guidance cues was more effective than an individual cue, suggesting a potential use of A-PCL/PANi nanofibers for skeletal muscle regeneration.
最近的支架设计趋势集中在能够为特定细胞类型提供适当的导向线索的材料上，以调节细胞行为。在这项研究中，开发了高度对齐且导电的纳米纤维，它们可以同时为细胞提供形貌和电线索。然后，研究了它们作为骨骼肌组织工程功能支架的潜力。由聚苯胺（PANi）和聚己内酯（PCL）组成的有序纳米纤维通过在收集器区域引入外部磁场进行电纺。将 PANi 掺入 PCL 纤维中，可使纤维的电导率从纯 PCL 纤维的不可检测水平显著提高到含 3wt.% PANi 的纤维的 63.6±6.6mS cm(-1)（PCL/PANi-3）。为了研究电纺支架上的形貌和电线索协同作用对骨骼肌成肌细胞分化的影响，将小鼠 C2C12 成肌细胞培养在随机 PCL（R-PCL）、对齐 PCL（A-PCL）、随机 PCL/PANi-3（R-PCL/PANi）和对齐 PCL/PANi-3（A-PCL/PANi）纳米纤维上。结果表明，与 R-PCL 支架相比，对齐纳米纤维（A-PCL 和 A-PCL/PANi）可以引导成肌细胞取向并促进肌管形成（即肌管数量增加约 40%和 80%）。此外，与非导电 A-PCL 支架或 R-PCL/PANi 相比，导电 A-PCL/PANi 纳米纤维进一步增强了肌管成熟（即融合和成熟指数分别增加约 30%和 23%或 15%和 18%）。这些结果表明，两种导向线索的协同作用比单一线索更有效，表明 A-PCL/PANi 纳米纤维在骨骼肌再生方面具有潜在用途。
