Effects of Starch/Polycaprolactone-based Blends for Spinal Cord Injury Regeneration in Neurons/Glial Cells Viability and Proliferation

Spinal cord injury (SCI) leads to drastic alterations on the quality of life of afflicted individuals. With the advent of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine where approaches combining biomaterials, cells and growth factors are used, one can envisage novel strategies that can adequately tackle this problem. The objective of this study was to evaluate a blend of starch with poly(epsilon-caprolactone) (SPCL) aimed to be used for the development of scaffolds spinal cord injury (SCI) repair. SPCL linear parallel filaments were deposited on polystyrene coverslips and assays were carried out using primary cultures of hippocampal neurons and glial cells. Light and fluorescence microscopy observations revealed that both cell populations were not negatively affected by the SPCL-based biomaterial. MTS and total protein quantification indicated that both cell viability and proliferation rates were similar to controls. Both neurons and astrocytes occasionally contacted the surface of SPCL filaments through their dendrites and cytoplasmatic processes, respectively, while microglial cells were unable to do so. Using single cell [Ca2+](i) imaging, hippocampal neurons were observed growing within the patterned channels and were functional as assessed by the response to a 30mM KCl stimulus. The present data demonstrated that SPCL-based blends are potentially suitable for the development of scaffolds in SCI regenerative medicine.