期刊
JOURNAL OF THE MECHANICAL BEHAVIOR OF BIOMEDICAL MATERIALS
卷 21, 期 -, 页码 185-194出版社
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.jmbbm.2013.03.001
关键词
Corneal tissue engineering; Scaffold; Electrospinning; Hydrogel; Gelatin fiber
资金
- Thai Government
A severe shortage of good quality donor cornea is now an international crisis in public health. Alternatives for donor tissue need to be urgently developed to meet the increasing demand for corneal transplantation. Hydrogels have been widely used as scaffolds for corneal tissue regeneration due to their large water content, similar to that of native tissue. However, these hydrogel scaffolds lack the fibrous structure that functions as a load-bearing component in the native tissue, resulting in poor mechanical performance. This work shows that mechanical properties of compliant hydrogels can be substantially enhanced with electrospun nanofiber reinforcement. Electrospun gelatin nanofibers were infiltrated with alginate hydrogels, yielding transparent fiber-reinforced hydrogels. Without prior crosslinking, electrospun gelatin nanofibers improved the tensile elastic modulus of the hydrogels from 78+/-19 kPa to 450+/-100 kPa. Stiffer hydrogels, with elastic modulus of 820+/-210 kPa, were obtained by crosslinking the gelatin fibers with carbodiimide hydrochloride in ethanol before the infiltration process, but at the expense of transparency. The developed fiber-reinforced hydrogels show great promise as mechanically robust scaffolds for corneal tissue engineering applications. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
作者
我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。
推荐
暂无数据