Cell attachment to hydrogel-electrospun fiber mat composite materials

Ning Han; Jed K Johnson; Patrick A Bradley; Kunal S Parikh; John J Lannutti; Jessica O Winter

doi:10.3390/jfb3030497

Cell attachment to hydrogel-electrospun fiber mat composite materials

J Funct Biomater. 2012 Jul 27;3(3):497-513. doi: 10.3390/jfb3030497.

Authors

Ning Han¹, Jed K Johnson², Patrick A Bradley³, Kunal S Parikh⁴, John J Lannutti⁵, Jessica O Winter⁶

Affiliations

¹ William G. Lowrie Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. Ceres-han@hotmail.com.
² Department of Materials and Science Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. jed.johnson@nanofibersolutions.com.
³ Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. bradley.317@osu.edu.
⁴ William G. Lowrie Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. kunal.parikh.71@gmail.com.
⁵ Department of Materials and Science Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. lannuttj@matsceng.ohio-state.edu.
⁶ William G. Lowrie Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. winter.63@osu.edu.

Abstract

Hydrogels, electrospun fiber mats (EFMs), and their composites have been extensively studied for tissue engineering because of their physical and chemical similarity to native biological systems. However, while chemically similar, hydrogels and electrospun fiber mats display very different topographical features. Here, we examine the influence of surface topography and composition of hydrogels, EFMs, and hydrogel-EFM composites on cell behavior. Materials studied were composed of synthetic poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(ε-caprolactone) (PEGPCL) hydrogels and electrospun poly(caprolactone) (PCL) and core/shell PCL/PEGPCL constituent materials. The number of adherent cells and cell circularity were most strongly influenced by the fibrous nature of materials (e.g., topography), whereas cell spreading was more strongly influenced by material composition (e.g., chemistry). These results suggest that cell attachment and proliferation to hydrogel-EFM composites can be tuned by varying these properties to provide important insights for the future design of such composite materials.