Background and purpose: Electrospinning is one of the process techniques to produce fiber in nanoscale diameter. Various biodegradable polymers were used to develop nanoscaffolds including natural and synthetic type. Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) is a non-toxic, hydrophilic, and biocompatible material. Chitosan is a natural polymer, which is biodegradable, biocompatible, and antibacterial. In the previous studies, PVA and chitosan have been used for many tissue engineering applications. However, most of the studies use only single polymer to fabricate nanofibers. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to fabricate PVA and PVA/Chitosan nanofiber scaffold for further tissue engineering applications.
Materials and methods: PVA and PVA/Chitosan were used as the material to fabricate scaffold. The 3D nanofiber scaffold was produced via electrospinning. Surface of nanofiber scaffolds were modified using Type I collagen coating. NIH 3T3 fibroblast cell line was used as the cell source in this study. Fibroblast cells were seeded onto 3D scaffolds for different time points. Cellular morphology characterization was observed using inverted light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The cell adhesion and spreading rate were determined by H&E Stain. The cell viability was determined by MTS assay. RT-PCR was used to examine the cellular gene expression after culturing for 5 days.
Results and discussion: PVA nanofiber of 316±63.4 nm in diameter and PVA/Chitosan nanofiber of 109.4±16.5 nm in diameter were obtained. The fibroblast cell was attached with round shape on the PVA nanofiber scaffold and with spindle shape on the PVA/Chitosan nanofiber scaffold. The result shows that the fibroblast exhibit excellent cell adhesion rate, spreading rate, cell viability and gene expression on the PVA/Chitosan nanofiber scaffold. The cell adhesion rate was increased when matrices coated with Type I collagen.
Conclusion: In present study, PVA/Chitosan nanofiber scaffold shows better biocompatibility than PVA nanofiber scaffold. Further coating collagen on nanofiber scaffold does not display further improvement in cell compatibility except cell adhesion rate. Future study will focus on systematic parameter setting, platform modification, increase strength of scaffold, bioreactor, and in-vivo experiment.
