Development of double porous poly (ε - caprolactone)/chitosan polymer as tissue engineering scaffold

Publication date: Available online 14 October 2019Source: Materials Science and Engineering: CAuthor(s): Pritam Das, Jean-Christophe Remigy, Jean-François Lahitte, Andries D. van der Meer, Barbara Garmy-Susini, Clémence Coetsier, Sandrine Desclaux, Patrice BacchinAbstractPolymer blend made from poly(ε - caprolactone)/chitosan (PCL/CHT) offers interesting opportunities for biological applications. The paper presents a new way to fabricate PCL/CHT double-porosity (macrovoids with interconnected microporosity) membrane materials from a chemical optimization of the solvent and non-solvent phases and from a modified phase inversion technique. By varying the PCL/CHT proportion, it is shown that it is possible to improve the chemical and physical properties of the CHT carbohydrate polymer. The PCL/CHT membranes are fully characterized in term of physico-chemical properties (ATR-FTIR, XRD and DSC) to understand the miscibility of the two-polymer blend. Morphological characterization by SEM shows that by increasing CHT wt% in the blend, the size of the macrovoids was increasing. Rapid enzymatic degradation of PCL from all the blend was found by using lipase (from P. cepacia). The mechanisms at the origin of the morphological structuration of the material is also discussed. To test the ability to operate these materials as small diameter vascular scaffolds, cell culture with human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were carried out on the membrane and the results analyzed wit...
Source: Materials Science and Engineering: C - Category: Materials Science Source Type: research