Cartilage regeneration electrospun scaffolds

Levorson EJ, et al. Fabrication and characterization of multiscale electrospun scaffolds for cartilage regeneration. Biomed Mater 2013 8. 

Electrospun fibers have also been researched for cartilage regeneration procedures. Thorvaldsson et al. (2(X)8) used a combination of micro- and nanofibers to create novel fiber structures. This enhanced the pore structure characteristics of the fabricated scaffold. The synthesized scaffold enhanced the human chondrocyte infiltration. Nanocomposites consisting of multiwalled carbon nanombes (MWCNTs) and PLA were fabricated using electrospinning. The nanocomposite material displayed enhanced mechanical properties and improved the chondrogenesis of MSCs (Holmes et al., 2013). 

The use of PLA alone for electrospun scaffolds in cartilage regeneration has had little to no attention probably due to the slow clearance rates of the material during rapid biodegradation, which accumulate the acidic by-products of the polymers in the native tissne. Thns, it has been typically used as a component for blends or... 

Overall, these results demonstrate the superiority of electrospun scaffolds over typical tissue-culture plates as a cell-culture platform for cartilage regeneration. The nanofibrous structure not only enhances the phenotypic maintenance of mature chondrocytes, but also promotes the differentiation of stem cells toward chondrocytes. 

Overall, electrospinning finds a great utility in the fabrication of in vitro cell culture systems and in vivo tissue-engineering scaffolds. However, there are still limitations and drawbacks that need to be overcome to further enhance therapeutic applications of electrospun scaffolds in cartilage regeneration. 

Levorson, E.J., Raman Sreerekha, P, Chennazhi, K.P., Kasper, F.K., Nair, S.V., Mikos, A.G., 2013. Fabrication and characterization of multiscale electrospun scaffolds for cartilage regeneration. Biomedical Materials 8, 014103. 

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