Extruded collagen-polyethylene glycol fibers for tissue engineering applications

The repair of anterior cruciate ligament, skin, tendon and cartilage remains a challenging clinical problem. Extruded collagen fibers comprise a promising scaffold for tissue engineering applications; however the engineering of these fibers has still to be improved to bring this material to clinical practice. Herein we investigate the influence of collagen concentration, the amount of PEG Mw 8K and the extrusion tube internal diameter on the properties of these fibers. Ultrastructural evaluation revealed packed intra-fibrillar structure. The thermal properties were found to be independent of the collagen concentration, the amount of PEG or the extrusion tube internal diameter (p > 0.05). An inversely proportional relationship between dry fiber diameter and stress at break was found. The 20% PEG was identified as the optimal amount required for the production of reproducible fibers. Increasing the collagen concentration resulted in fibers with higher diameter (p < 0.001), force (p < 0.001) and strain at break (p < 0.02) values, whilst the stress at break (p < 0.001) and the modulus (p < 0.007) values were decreased. Increasing the extrusion tube internal diameter influence significantly (p < 0.001) all the investigated mechanical properties. Overall, extruded collagen fibers were produced with properties similar to those of native or synthetic fibers to suit a wide range of tissue engineering applications.