Engineering of tenogenic patch scaffold with fibrous microtopography and reinforcement via uniaxial cold-drawing

Abstract

Rotator cuff tendon repair remains a great challenge in orthopedic surgery. Attempts to inspire the microenvironmental recapitulation from in vivo have rarely elaborated on aligned and reinforced fibrous microtopography required for clinical application. Furthermore, compromises with fibrous densification during fabrication often limit the scaffold’s relevance in translational medicine. Here, we reported a facile and scalable method of uniaxial cold-drawing for engineering tendon patch scaffold. Comprised of bioactive and structure-supporting portions, the scaffold obtained featured microtopography of aligned and sparely-stacked fibres while providing mechanical properties approaching to that of human rotator cuff tendon. The structural integration between scaffold’s two portions resulted in stable and reliable fabrication, where parameters of drawing ratio, speed and temperature influenced the formation of fibrous microtopography. When mesenchymal stem cells were cultured with the scaffold, phenotypic markers of tenogenesis including scleraxis, decorin and tenomodulin were examined higher over nonfibrous controls. Our results further demonstrated that expression of collagen type I was associated with highly aligned intracellular cytoskeleton and the higher nucleus alignment and elongation, coupling with down-regulated cell proliferation and noncytotoxicity.

Keywords

• Tissue regeneration
• Tendon
• Scaffold
• Poly(epsilon-caprolactone)
• Electrospinning