Strategies for tuning pore size in electrospun scaffolds for tissue engineering applications

BONGIOVANNI ABEL, SILVESTRE; ABRAHAM, GUSTAVO A.

Iasi

Congreso; International Congress of Apollonia University from Iasi. By promoting excellence, we prepare the future; 2022

In the last decade, electrohydrodynamic techniques (EHD) have gained considerable attention mainly triggered by the potential applications in bio/nanotechnology. Electrospun scaffolds provide a very suitable platform to develop innovative scaffolds for applications in the biomedical field such as hard and soft tissue engineering, wound healing, and drug delivery systems. However, electrospun scaffolds present a dense packing of fibers that reduces cell infiltration and therefore lead in some cases to suboptimal cell response. By any modification in the process setup, any enhancement in the scaffold porosity would enrich cell infiltration and subsequent cell-to-cell and cell-to-matrix interactions leading to better and optimal cell response. Our research group focuses its efforts on the design, preparation, characterization, and processing of polymeric/composite nanofibrous scaffolds obtained by EHD and combined techniques. In this presentation, a short overview of the strategies for tuning and enhancing pore size in electrospun scaffolds is presented. In addition, some experimental results related to this topic and current challenges are outlined.