Electrospinning of Hyperbranched Poly-L-Lysine/Polyaniline Nanofibers for Application in Cardiac Tissue Engineering

Abstract

Electrospun polyaniline nanofibers are one of the most promising materials for cardiac tissue engineering due to their tunable electroactive properties. Moreover, the biocompatibility of polyaniline nanofibes can be improved by grafting of adhesive peptides during the synthesis. In this paper, we describe the biocompatible properties and cardiomyocytes proliferation on polyaniline electrospun nanofibers modified by hyperbranched poly-L-lysine dendrimers (HPLys). The microstructure characterization of the HPLys/polyaniline nanofibers was carried out by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). It was observed that the application of electrical current stimulates the differentiation of cardiac cells cultured on the nanofiber scaffolds. Both electroactivity and biocompatibility of the HPLys based nanofibers suggest the use this material for culture of cardiac cells and opens the possibility of using this material as a biocompatible electroactive 3-D matrix in cardiac tissue engineering.

Keywords:

• Tissue engineering
• hyperbranched poly-l-lysine
• polyaniline nanotubes
• conductive electrospun nanofibers

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge to Finep, CNPq, CAPES, FAPESP and Fapemig for the financial support.