Electrospun mats based on soy protein isolate for soft tissue engineering applications

P.C. CARACCIOLO; G.A. ABRAHAM; M. POPOV; A.R. BOCCACCINI; L. LIVERANI

Los Cocos, Córdoba

Simposio; XII Simposio Argentino de Polímeros SAP 2017; 2017

Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

Soy protein shows interesting properties that makes it attractive to the tissue engineering field, which are: tailorable biodegradability, abundance, relatively low cost, long storage stability, low immunogenicity, ant its structural similarity to the extracellular matrix components [1]. Therefore, it has been proposed for a number of biomedical applications, such as wound dressing [2], tissue engineering [3], and drug delivery systems [4,5] among others. Then, the aim of this work was to obtain electrospun scaffolds based on soy protein isolate (SPI), commercially available form of soy protein that contains more than 90% of proteins, blended with a bioresorbable segmented poly(ester urethane) (SPEU), using polyethylene oxide (PEO) as carrier polymer. Glacial acetic acid was used as a benign solvent, following the concepts of green electrospinning technique. Two different solution formulations have been tested, both containing 3% w/v of SPI and 3% w/v of SPEU, differing in the PEO content (1% w/v, 0.5% w/v, 0.25 % w/v). Different processing parameters were explored. Characterization was carried out by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). SEM micrographs showed the nanofibrous morphology of the obtained electrospun scaffolds. Samples containing higher PEO content displayed defective fibrous structure, presenting drops, beads, and inhomogeneous fiber diameters. On the other hand, low PEO content improved the formation of bead-free randomly oriented fibers. However, samples presented a diameter average in the order of 250 nm with some discontinuities. Mechanical characterization of these scaffolds is in progress.