Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting | Singapore

Mechanobiology of Disease

Poster Abstracts

22-POS Board 22 Developing of Artificial Microvasculature Using Coaxial Electrospun Porous Microfibers Je-Hyun Han , Ung Hyun Ko, Jennifer H. Shin. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, South Korea. For proper regeneration of severely damaged tissue, tissue engineering focuses on development of transplantable artificial 3D tissues. One of the main issues in the development of artificial 3D tissues is maintaining high viability in the densely packed cells. For this, it would be essential to integrate functional vasculatures in the tissue. Based on these needs, there have been extensive studies on constructing capillary-like structures using 3D printing, MEMS and other micro- manufacture techniques. The coaxial electrospinning would be an efficient way to make micro- sized hollow tubes using soluble core and biocompatible shell polymers. In this study, the overall structure of fibers was fabricated with polycaprolactone (PCL) solution and heavy mineral oil to mimic capillary-like channels. Additionally, to enhance the nutrition exchange between the inside and outside of the fibers, phase separation techniques were utilized using PCL solution and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) mixture to develop nano-sized pores on the surface of the fibers. These fibers were collected using tilted gap aluminum collectors to regulate the spacing between capillary fibers and to constrain the number of fibers. The PCL grip was then printed onto the collected fibers to allow easy stacking of the layers of capillary fibers. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were cultured on the collected fibers to be formed artificial capillary-vessel like channels. The viability and functionality of HUVECs were quantified using immunohistochemistry under different fiber morphology and densities. From this study, porous micro-sized channel based vasculature is shown to be utilized as the essential basis of in vitro 3D structures and cell survival for tissue engineering. This work was supported by the NRF grant 2013R1A2A2A01017014 and 2015M3A9B3028685.

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