A bi-layered tubular scaffold for effective anti-coagulant in vascular tissue engineering
Wangchao Yao, Hongbing Gu, Tao Hong, Yao Wang, Sihao Chen, Xiumei Mo, Wenyao Li, Chunsheng Wang, Tonghe Zhu, Shuyang Lu
Abstract
Acute coagulation is one of the vexed problems in transplantation of small-diameter artificial blood vessel. Three-dimensional porous heparin-modified gelatin (Gel)@chitosan (CS) tubular scaffold were successfully acquired by using the method of freeze-drying combined with amination for application in tissue regeneration of blood vessels. Initially, homogeneous gelatin solution was initially poured into a tubular mold and underwent a procedure of vacuum freeze-drying to form a three-dimensional porous tubular skeleton. Chitosan was used to loading heparin (Hep) which is a kind of efficient anticoagulant. The Hep-loaded CS composite solution were poured into Gel tubular skeleton, following freeze-drying matched EDC-NHS crosslinking to form [email protected] tubular scaffold exhibited a three-dimensional structure and porous morphology. Then, poly(ester-urethane)urea/gelatin (PU75) micro-nano fibers were electrospinning outside the [email protected] tube as mechanical reinforcement layer. The [email protected]/PU75 tube showed higher hydrophilicity, stable mechanical properties as well as no cytotoxicity on human umbilical vein endothelial cells. Importantly, the three-dimensional functional [email protected]/PU75 tubular scaffold shows a good rapid endothelialization performance and effective anti-acute coagulation properties. Therefore, the developed [email protected]/PU75 tube was proposed to be a potential scaffold for remodeling vascular tissue.