Fabrication of Biomimetic Scaffolds with Oriented Porous Morphology for Cardiac Tissue Engineering

Cardiac tissue engineering has achieved great advances in the last decade. As one of the key factors for cell growth and tissue regeneration, fabrication of scaffolds with improved structure and performances become one of the attractive challenges. As native heart is a perfect model, in order to mimic the structure and component of cardiac extracellular matrix (ECM), a "Collagen-Chitosan-Matrigel" material system was established and scaffolds with biomimetic "Oriented Big Pores-Interconnected Small Pores" were designed and fabricated, via Oriented Thermally Induced Phase Separation (OTIPS) technique. Results indicated that scaffold morphologies, such as asymmetric porous structure, pore diameter, orientation index value, and so on, could be evaluated by fabrication parameters (such as temperature gradient and materials mixture ratios). After seeded with myocardial cells and statically cultured in vitro, results indicated that cells could grow into big pores and adhere to the material surface. HE staining results showed that cells stretched along with orientation directon of the scaffold. These results demonstrate that the oriented porous morphology of the scaffolds could promote the alignment and interconnectivity of cells and served as a potential matrix for other tissue engineering applications.