Abstract
Forming novel 3D fibrous scaffolds by mixing natural and synthetic polymers is very interesting and promising for many biomedical applications. Hybrid scaffolds made from fibers of chitosan and polycaprolactone are highly valuable for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications due to combining the benefits of both polymers to improve the mechanical, physical and biological properties needed for biomedical fields. To prepare the electrospinning solutions of PCL and CS mixture, a 10: 3 wt% was used and electrospun with an acceleration voltage of 20 kV after filtering with a 0.1 mm PTFE membrane. Morphological observation indicated that the fibers are of uniform diameter (200-500 nm). Differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analyzer were used to characterize the thermal behaviour of CS/PCL nanofibers. Further, the scaffolds were tested with human telomerized (hTERT) human bone marrow (hBM)-mesenchymal (MSC). The cells were seeded at a density of 0.05x10(6) cells on each CS/PCL nanofibrous scaffold and cultured on the scaffolds for 6 days. The bone marrow stromal cells showed to be viable after attaching to CS/PCL scaffolds. The cell viability was high and the cells even proliferated on this scaffold. It is found that the CS/PCL fibrous scaffolds used in this study constitute a promising material for culturing these types of cells and for tissue engineering.