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Updated: Apr 19, 2026
Electrospun Fibrous Scaffolds of Polyglycerol-dodecanedioate for Engineering Neural Tissues From Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells
Published on: June 18, 2014
Anisotropic poly (glycerol sebacate)-poly (ϵ-caprolactone) electrospun fibers promote endothelial cell guidance
Akhilesh K Gaharwar1, Mehdi Nikkhah, Shilpa Sant
1David H Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Center for Biomedical Engineering, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women´s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Contributed equally. Currently at the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77841, USA.
Abstract:
Topographical cell guidance is utilized to engineer highly organized and aligned cellular constructs for numerous tissue engineering applications. Recently, electrospun scaffolds fabricated using poly(glycerol sebacate) (PGS) and poly(ϵ-caprolactone) (PCL) have shown a great promise to support valvular interstitial cell functions for the development of tissue engineered heart valves. However, one of the major drawbacks of PGS-PCL scaffolds is the lack of control over cellular alignment. In this work, we investigate the role of scaffold architecture on the endothelial cell alignment, proliferation and formation of organized cellular structures. In particular, PGS-PCL scaffolds with randomly oriented and highly aligned fibers with tunable mechanical properties were fabricated using electrospinning technique. After one week of culture, endothelial cells on the aligned scaffolds exhibited higher proliferation compared to those cultures on randomly oriented fibrous scaffolds. Furthermore, the endothelial cells reorganized in response to the topographical features of aligned scaffolds forming highly organized cellular constructs. Thus, topographical contact guidance, provided by aligned PGS-PCL scaffolds, is envisioned to be useful in developing cellular structures for vascular tissue engineering.
