Electrospun Fibrous Silica for Bone Tissue Engineering Applications
Alexandra Elena Stoica, Alexandra Cătălina Bîrcă, Oana Gherasim, Anton Ficai, Alexandru Mihai Grumezescu, Ovidiu Oprea, Bogdan Ştefan Vasile, Cornel Baltă, Ecaterina Andronescu, Anca Hermenean
Abstract
The production of highly porous and three-dimensional (3D) scaffolds with biomimicking abilities has gained extensive attention in recent years for tissue engineering (TE) applications. Considering the attractive and versatile biomedical functionality of silica (SiO2) nanomaterials, we propose herein the development and validation of SiO2-based 3D scaffolds for TE. This is the first report on the development of fibrous silica architectures, using tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) during the self-assembly electrospinning (ES) processing (a layer of flat fibers must first be created in self-assembly electrospinning before fiber stacks can develop on the fiber mat). The compositional and microstructural characteristics of obtained fibrous materials were evaluated by complementary techniques, in both the pre-ES aging period and post-ES calcination. Then, in vivo evaluation confirmed their possible use as bioactive scaffolds in bone TE.