Preparation And Evaluation Of Cross-Linking Electrospun Nanofibers

Electrospinning is one of methods to produce effectively nanofibers with diameter ranging from several nanometers to hundreds of nanometers.Recently,electrospinning of biopolymers attracts more attentions because of their good biocompatibility.The electrospun nanofibers have many potential applications in tissue engineering.Collagen,gelatin and chitosan possessed the good biological and chemical characteristis.The source of collagen,gelatin and chitosan was wide.They had low antigenicity,good biological compatibility and degradation,then decomposed into small molecules that were beneficial to body absorption after some time.The dissolubility of them was good,and functional group was modified easily.Cell also can easily proliferate on the surface of them.As a protein and glycosaminogly, collagen,gelatin and chitosan are extensive application in the biomedical field.As the use of biology and clinic for many years,people found the deficiency of collagen as biological scaffold material.This deficiency restricted seriously development of them.People found that they weren't satisfied for mechanical environment of body organ as their low mechanical strength.So it is necessary to crosslink and modify them.They are often used in traditional cross-linking method most used type of synthetic chemical cross-linking agent.The type of cross-linking agent itself has a high or relatively high cytotoxicity.It will affect the growth of normal tissue after biological material derived from implanted in the human body. With the summary on all kinds of physical and chemical methods in the modification of collagen,gelatin and chitosan before,gelatin and collagen-chitosan complex nanofibers were prepared with a natural crosslinker genipin in order to reduce the toxicity of the normal chemical crosslinker.The SEM,XRD,DSC,TG, hydrophilicity,mechanical properties and cytocompatibility of the nanofibers were investigated.It was found that the mechanical performance and cytocompatibilty of the genipin crosslinked gelatin were improved significantly.So crosslinking methods were established.Finally,gelatin and collagen-chitosan complex nanofibers scaffolds were fabricated through electrospinning using genipin as crosslinker.The results suggested that the obtained scafolds have promising potential in tissue engineering.