Design of a collagen/silk mechano-compatible composite scaffold for the vascular tissue engineering: Focus on compliance

One of the merging methods to produce tissue-engineered vascular substitutes is to process scaffolds to direct the regeneration of vascular tissues. Collagen, as one of the main protein in the vascular extracellular matrix, is one of biopolymers that exhibits a major potential for scaffold technology. However, gels made from reconstituted collagen generally exhibit poor mechanical properties and limited manipulability. Therefore, adding a reinforcement to the scaffold to make the structure resist to the physiological constraints applied during the regeneration represents a valid alternative. Silk fibroin is an interesting reinforcing candidate being a mechanically strong natural fibre, susceptible to proteolytic degradation in vivo and showing acceptable biological performances. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a model of a composite scaffold obtained by controlling the filament geometry winding of silk fibroin in the collagen gel. A finite element model taking into account the orthotropic elasticity of arteries has been combined with classic laminate theory applied to the filament winding of a tubular vessel. The design of the small structure susceptible to scaffold the vascular tissue regeneration was optimised by mean of an evolutive algorithm with the imperative to mimic the experimentally measured mechanical properties (compliance) of a native artery.