Heparin conjugated PCL/Gel – PCL/Gel/n-HA bilayer fibrous membrane for potential regeneration of soft and hard tissues

Abstract

A novel bilayer fibrous membrane for guided tissue regeneration (GTR) was prepared via two-step electrospinning process, subsequent crosslinking and surface conjugation with heparin. The bilayer membrane consists of upper layer polycaprolactone/gelatin (PCL/Gel) membrane for soft tissue regeneration and lower layer PCL/Gel/nano-hydroxyapatite (PCL/Gel/n-HA) membrane for hard tissue regeneration. The results indicated that the physicochemical and biological properties of the membrane were strongly influenced by the crosslinking time and by the heparin conjugation. Crosslinking effectively prolonged the degradation time while maintaining the membrane barrier function, and the surface heparin conjugation obviously improved the biological performance of the membrane. An enhanced cell adhesion and proliferation were observed on the heparin-conjugated fibrous membranes, which also showed good histocompatibility and favorable in vivo degradability. The electrospun bilayer fibrous membrane may have promising prospect for modulation of cell response and simultaneous regeneration of soft and hard tissues.

Keywords:

• Electrospun fibers
• bilayer membrane
• heparin conjugation
• tissue regeneration

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Jiqiu Wen at Analytical & Testing Center of Sichuan University for the help with XRD analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by China NFSC fund (No. 31670965), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFA0201703/2016YFA0201700) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2018M633381).