科研之友
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摘要
There is an urgent need for a rationally designed, cellularized skin graft capable of reproducing the microenvironmental cues necessary to promote skin healing and regeneration. To address this need, we developed a composite scaffold, namely, CA/C-PEG, composed of a porous chitosan-alginate (CA) structure impregnated with a thermally reversible chitosan-poly(ethylene glycol) (C-PEG) gel to incorporate skin cells as a bi-layered skin equivalent. Fibroblasts were encapsulated in C-PEG to simulate the dermal layer while the keratinocytes were seeded on the top of the CA/C-PEG composite scaffold to mimic the epidermal layer. The CA scaffold provided mechanical support for the C-PEG gel and the C-PEG get physically segregated the keratinocytes from fibroblasts in the construct. Three different tissue culture micro-environments were tested: CA scaffolds without C-PEG cultured in cell culture medium without an air-liquid interface (-gel -interface), CA scaffolds impregnated with C-PEG and cultured in cell culture medium without an air-liquid interface (+gel -interface), and CA scaffolds impregnated with C-PEG cultured in cell culture medium with an air-liquid interface (+gel +interface). We found that the presence of C-PEG increased the cellular proliferation rates of both keratinocytes and fibroblasts, and the air-liquid interface induced keratinocyte maturation. This CA/C-PEG composite scaffold design is capable of recapitulating micro-environments relevant to skin tissue engineering, and may be a useful tool for future skin tissue engineering applications.
- 出版日期2014-8-28
