Producing nanofiber structures by electrospinning for tissue engineering

The University of British Columbia, Canada and M. R. GANDHI, Drexel University, USA 

Tissue engineering was identified by the United States National Science Foundation some ten years ago as an emerging area of national importance and defined as  

Cells cultured Cell-scaffold on scaffold constructs in bioreactors 

A large family of fiber architectures is available for surgical implants (Fig. 2.3). The design and selection of these fiber architectures for tissue engineering can be carried out on the fiber and structural levels resulting in a wide range of dimensional scale, fiber tortuosity and fabric porosity as characterized by the fiber volume fraction-orientation map.  

Since the 1950s, many of the textile structures illustrated in Fig. 2.3 have been used for surgical implants with considerable success. Some of the structures and their respective applications are summarized in Table 2.1. These fibrous structures are mostly from non-absorbable polymers consisting of fibers larger than 10 im in diameter. Unfortunately, these fibers were developed primarily for clothing rather than for medical applications. It is 

---

Producing nanofiber structures by electrospinning for tissue engineering... 

---