Biomimetic Fibrous Extracellular Matrix for Cartilage Tissue Engineering

Biodegradable polymers have been widely used as scaffolding materials to regenerate new tissues. To mimic natural extracellular matrix architecture, a novel highly porous structure, which is a three-dimensional interconnected fibrous network with a fiber diameter ranging from 100 to 500 nm, has been created from poly (L-lactic acid) in this work. These fibrous matrices were prepared from the polymer solutions by a procedure involving thermally induced gelation, solvent exchange, and freeze-drying. The meshes were biomimetically modified with gelatin and chitosan. The cell morphology, viability and histochemical analysis of bovine articular chondrocytes seeded and expanded on scaffolds were examined. These results indicated that gelatin and chitosan used to modify PLLA scaffolds could improve the chondrocytes adhesion, proliferation and function. The mesh scaffolds are suitable for cartilage reconstruction.