Bioactive scaffolds based on collagen filaments with tunable physico-chemical and biological features

Native tissues such as nerve bundles, blood vessels and tendons have extracellular matrices with a characteristic linear orientation, which cannot be fully achieved with the current technology for the development of regenerative biomaterials. In this study, bioactive and oriented collagen filaments have been fabricated using a combination of wet-spinning and carbodiimide-based crosslinking. The wet-spinning techniques, including extrusion and collection rates, and their influences on collagen filaments were studied and optimized. The diameter of the attained collagen filaments can be adjusted ranging from 30 μm to 650 μm. Further characterizations, such as circular dichroism, scanning electron microscopy, small-angle X-ray scattering and Fourier transform infrared spectra analysis, showed that the native structure of the collagen was greatly preserved after the filament preparation process. The measurements of weight swelling ratio and degradation rate indicate that the crosslinking method can efficiently regulate the physico-chemical properties of collagen filaments, including water absorption and degradation behaviors. In particular, the mechanical strength of collagen filaments can be greatly improved via crosslinking. In addition, cells can adhere and spread on collagen filaments in well-aligned patterns, showing appropriate biological features. It can be concluded that the bioactive collagen filaments with tunable properties are preferable for developing tissue engineering scaffolds with characteristic orientation features. With further study of the interactions between collagen filaments and cells, this work may shed light on the development of collagen based biomaterials that would be beneficial in the field of tissue engineering.