Tailoring the spatial filament organization within nanofibrous tissue engineering scaffolds

Abstract

Fabricating scaffolds with biomimetic architectures is an important step toward engineering functional tissues. Electrospinning is a popular approach for creating nanofibrous substrates in which the filaments resembling the natural extracellular matrix (ECM) can provide topographical cues to cells directing their growth. One of the major challenges in electrospinning is tailoring the spatial organization of the filaments. To overcome this challenge, a hybrid static collector was utilized to form distinct filament organizations. The filament organization was characterized using image processing based on the Fourier Transforms Method. The effect of different filament orientation ratios on cellular growth is discussed.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Electrospinning
• spatial filament organization
• tissue interfaces
• hybrid collector