Fabrication Of Dual-Drug Controlled-Release Tissue Engineering Scaffolds In Nanoscale By Electrospinning

Tissue engineering (TE) is one of the new interdisciplinary fields which combined biology and material science. The aim is to reestablish human tissue and its function by planting scaffolds with functional cells incorporated into the damaged position. Among which, fabricating tissue engineering scaffolds with great biocompatibility become an important research direction.Electrospinning is a process that produces polymer fibers under the action of an external electric field imposed on a polymer solution or melt. Electrospinning technology is a simple and cost-effective method to prepare ultrafine fibers. In the past decades, significant progresses were achieved on theoretical and experimental studies. Especially, in biomedical fields, ultrafine fibers prepared by elelctrospinning have been widely used in tissue engineering scaffolds, drug delivery system, which has attracted more and more attentions in the world.Two traditional drug carriers were combined by electrospinning to form a dual-drug composite carrier system which carries two different drugs at one time and release them separately. The physicochemical characteristics of the dual-drug system were assessed by using different methods, the release profiles were then studied and the release mechanism was analyzed after loading and releasing two modal drugs in each carrier of the system.In addition , the adhesion and proliferation of resulting releasing system on different cells were investigated by detecting the biocompatibility and cytocompatibility of the system. Their potential clinical applications were discussed.The results showed that the nanoparticles were distributed on the surface and internal wall of the nanofibers, which lead the rough fiber surface with sags and crests. No new chemical bond and special crystal structures were observed according to their chemical structures.These resulting releasing system exhibited improved cell adhesion and proliferation due to their good hydrophilcity. The releasing experiments demonstrated the drugs released from each control-release carrier in the dual-drug system separately, which tremendously improved the release efficiency of different drugs. Especially for nanopaticles releasing, release duration was enlarged in a wide range, and the burst releasing or another word-dumping was restrained effectively. Furthermore, three kinds of cells adhered and proliferated very well in the dual-drug releasing mats, the mats have also a capability to induce cells grow in a radial direction, which make it possible to develop thus dual-drug system for clinical application.Predictably, as the studies goes on, such dual-drug controlled releasing system will be playing a significant role in future scientific researches and clinical applications, thanks to its characteristic in releasing several drugs separately at one time and great biocompatibility.