Electrospun Collagen: A Tissue Engineering Scaffold with Unique Functional Properties in a Wide Variety of Applications

Type I collagen and gelatin, a derivative of Type I collagen that has been denatured, can each be electrospun into tissue engineering scaffolds composed of nano-to micron-scale diameter fibers. We characterize the biological activity of these materials in a variety of tissue engineering applications, including endothelial cell-scaffold interactions, the onset of bone mineralization, dermal reconstruction, and the fabrication of skeletal muscle prosthetics. Electrospun collgen (esC) consistently exhibited unique biological properties in these functional assays. Even though gelatin can be spun into fibrillar scaffolds that resemble scaffolds of esC, our assays reveal that electrospun gelatin (esG) lacks intact a chains and is composed of proinflammatory peptide fragments. In contrast, esC retains intact a chains and is enriched in the a 2(I) subunit. The distinct fundamental properties of the constituent subunits that make up esC and esG appear to define their biological and functional properties.