Summary
The topography of a scaffold strongly influences how cells behave on it, which matters when engineering functional replacements for damaged tissue — including nerve. In this study, densely packed sub-micron fibres of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB), a biodegradable bacterial polyester, were electrospun in two configurations: randomly oriented mats and parallel-aligned arrays. Their effect on PC12 cells, a widely used neuron-like model, was then assessed. Fibre orientation shaped the cellular response: on the aligned PHB fibres the cells followed the fibre direction and extended longer, well-oriented neurites, whereas randomly oriented fibres gave a less directional response. The results show that aligned electrospun PHB substrates can guide neuron-like cell growth, supporting their use in nerve-regeneration scaffolds.
Authors & Affiliations
Giada Graziana Genchi
The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna & IIT Center for MicroBioRobotics, Pontedera (Pisa), Italy
Gianni Ciofani
The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna & IIT Center for MicroBioRobotics, Pontedera (Pisa), Italy
Alessandro Polini
Ioannis Liakos
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Genova, Italy
Donata Iandolo
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Italy
Athanassia Athanassiou
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Genova, Italy
Dario Pisignano
Virgilio Mattoli
IIT Center for MicroBioRobotics, Pontedera (Pisa), Italy
Arianna Menciassi
The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pontedera (Pisa), Italy
Topics
Neural Tissue Engineering
Fiber Alignment
Nerve Regeneration
Cell-Material Interaction
Materials
Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB)
Linari Electrospinning Systems
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