Fabrication and characteristics of chitosan-gelatin-hyaluronate-heparan sulfate scaffolds
Lin XM., Guan S., Ge D., Liu TQ., Ma XH., Cui ZF.
New types of chitosan-gelatin-hyaluronate-heparan sulfate (C-G-Ha-HS) hybrid three-dimensional scaffolds were fabricated by lyophilization method and their physical properties including the pore size, porosity, water absorption and degradation of the scaffolds were determined. Meanwhile, cell adhesion behavior, the cell status and viability as well as the biocompatibility in the fabricated scaffolds were detected by inoculating the neural stem/progenitor cells (NS/PCs) into the scaffold, and the results were compared with those of the cells inoculating into the chitosan-gelatin (C-G) scaffold. By the SEM observation and CCK-8 assay, it was found that the pore size of C-G-Ha-Hs scaffolds mainly range from 90 μm to 130 μm, porosity increases significantly, water absorption rate are above 95% and the scaffolds can degrade in vitro. C-G-Ha-HS scaffolds significantly improve the adhesion ratio and proliferation of NS/PCs on them and the cells in the scaffold can connect into neural networks. Compared with C-G scaffold, C-G-Ha-HS scaffolds (5:5) obviously enhance the NS/PCs adhesion ratio by (200.8±8.0)% and effectively increase the cell viability by (357.7±8.9)% after cell culture of 6 days. The results show that the C-G-Ha-Hs scaffolds are the suitable material used to construct the three-dimensional environment for the culture of NS/PCs in vitro, and can be used for tissue engineering as well as drug screening.