Preparation of nanofibers containing the microalga Spirulina (Arthrospira)

Spirulina is a microalga which offers biological functions highly favorable for tissue engineering. Highly porous scaffolds can be produced by electrospinning containing biomass of Spirulina. The goal of this contribution was therefore to establish spinning conditions allowing to produce well defined nanofibers with diameters down to about 100 nm and to produce nanofibers with various concentration of the biomass for subsequent studies in tissue engineering applications. The experimental results reveal that the blend system PEO/biomass is behaved surprisingly well in electrospinning. Very thin bead-free nanofibers with diameters of about 110 nm can be produced for different biomass contents of up to 67 wt.% of the nanofibers and for PEO concentrations in the spinning solution well below 4 wt.%. These results suggest to us the use of the biomass containing nanofibers as extracellular matrices for stem cell culture and future treatment of spinal chord injury. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.