SYNTHESIS, CHARACTERIZATION AND CYTOCOMPATIBILITY OF HIGHLY POROUS, THREE DIMENSIONAL POLY (1, 10 DECANEDIOL CO-TRICARBALLYLATE) BASED SCAFFOLDS FOR CARDIAC & OTHER TISSUE ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS

Abstract

Electrospinning is one of the recently developed methods that produces scaffolds resembling the natural extracellular matrix. It can utilize a wide array of natural and synthetic polymer materials to produce three dimensional, porous, biocompatible, biodegradable scaffolds by the aid of different variations of the machine setup. Reactive electrospinning is one type that produces in-situ cross-linked scaffolds. It has the advantages of being fast and efficient with tunable scaffold mechanical, morphological and thermal characteristics. In this work, we aim to synthesize, characterize and investigate the in vitro cytocompatibility of electrospun scaffolds of acrylated Poly (1, 10 decanediol-co-tricarballylate) (APDT) copolymer using photo-reactive electrospinning process with UV radiation for crosslinking, to be used for cardiac tissue engineering applications. The pre-polymer was synthesized via a poly condensation reaction between tricarballylic acid and decanediol. This was followed by an acrylation reaction to render the polymer UV photocrosslinkable. The effect of adding polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) to act as chain entanglement enhancer on the porous structure formation was also investigated. An optimized solution with concentrations of 20% (w/v) APDT and 8% (w/v) PVP in ethanol was successfully electrospun. Effect of PVP molecular weight was also assessed. Porous scaffolds produced by solvent free particulate leaching method using sodium chloride and trehalose as porogens were also prepared for comparison purposes. Characterization of the produced scaffolds was performed using chemical, thermal, and morphological techniques followed by in-vitro cell viability testing using H9C2 cardiomyoblasts and adipose tissue derived mesenchymal stem cells. Chemical and thermal characterization confirmed the successful synthesis of the polymer. Morphological analysis revealed successful production of the porous scaffolds with porosity of more than 70% and a higher fiber diameter and smaller pore size in case of higher molecular weight PVP. In addition, mechanical testing confirmed the elastomeric nature of the scaffolds that is required to withstand cardiac contraction and relaxation. Finally, cell viability assay showed no significant indirect cytotoxic effect on the cardiomyoblasts. Moreover, cell scaffolds interaction study showed noticeable cell attachment and growth on the electrospun scaffolds more than the references. This rendered our scaffolds a very promising candidate for cardiac tissue engineering applications.