Tissue engineering of annulus fibrosus using electrospun fibrous scaffolds with aligned polycaprolactone fibers

In tissue engineering, it is important to fabricate a three-dimensional scaffold that resemble the extracellular matrix (ECM) and topographical appearance of native tissue. The aim of this study is to test the hypothesis that varying microstructures of electrospun fibrous scaffolds by manipulating the relative degree of fiber alignment would influence the behaviors of porcine annulus fibrosus cells. Five types of electrospun fibrous scaffolds with polycaprolactone fibers having random or partially aligned arrangements have been prepared and investigated. The scaffold microstructures have been examined, and in vitro experiments have been carried out to assess cell-material interaction, cell proliferation, and ECM production. The results indicate that the scaffold with oriented fibers provides strong guidance to the cell orientation and ECM distribution. In addition, albeit the tensile moduli of electrospun fibrous scaffolds are lower than that of native tissue, they are comparable to those reported in literature; hence, the constructs cultured with optimized conditions including the scaffold material selection and dynamic mechanical conditioning would have the potential to possess the moduli closer to that of native tissue. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A, 2011.