Electrospun PET/PCL small diameter nanofibrous conduit for biomedical application

In recent years, the mortality rate caused by cardiovascular diseases has increased dramatically around the world. Tissue engineering is considered as a novel and efficient approach to offer a substituent of engineered tissues for defective body tissues. For this purpose, fabrication of the scaffold that resembles the physical and mechanical properties of natural body vessels, and culturing appropriate cells seems to be a promising approach. Due to the fibrous structure of the vascular wall, the nanofibrous scaffold produced by electrospinning could be a proper choice for vascular tissue engineering. One of the main properties of artificial vessels is its mechanical properties consistency with the native one in order to mimic its natural characteristics. To do so, in present study two biocompatible polymers, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polycaprolactone (PCL) with different blend ratio were electrospun into a tubular nanofibrous structure with 6 mm internal diameter and the mechanical properties such as tensile strength, modulus, compliance, bursting pressure, elastic recovery, and suture retention were investigated. The results revealed that PET/PCL (1:3) had better similar properties with the reported natural one as its longitudinal and transverse tensile strength was about 9.47 and 6.38 MPa, respectively. The longitudinal strain at break, compliance, bursting pressure, and suture retention were 205.88 ± 51.12%, 4.19 ± 0.78%/100 mmHg, 6378.76 ± 2159.20 mmHg, and 287.73 ± 13.10 gmf, respectively. The elasticity of this studied sample was 60.21 ± 12.49% as it was relieved, and this may be a good candidate for the artificial vessel in this size, as the MTT test confirmed its appropriate substrate for cell culture.