biomaterials-congress-2019-posters-abstracts

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Biomaterials Congress 2019

Materials Science and Nanotechnology | Volume 3

June 19-20, 2019 | Dublin, Ireland

OF EXCELLENCE

IN INTERNATIONAL

MEETINGS

YEARS

BIOMATERIALS,

CELLULAR AND TISSUE ENGINEERING

International Conference on

Mater Sci Nanotechnol 2019, Volume 3

INTERLACED SCAFFOLDS FOR TISSUE ENGINEERED HEART VALVES (TEHVS)

Rabia Nazir

University of Oxford, UK

issue engineers have achieved limited success so far in designing an ideal scaffold for aortic valve; scaffolds lack in me-

chanical compatibility, appropriate degradation rate, and microstructural similarity. This paper, therefore, has demon-

strated a carbodiimide-based sequential crosslinking technique to prepare aortic valve extracellular matrix mimicking

(ECM) hybrid scaffolds from collagen type I and hyaluronic acid (HA), the building blocks of heart valve ECM, with tailorable

crosslinking densities. Swelling studies revealed that crosslinking densities of parent networks increased with increasing the

concentration of the crosslinking agents whereas crosslinking densities of hybrid scaffolds averaged from those of parent

collagen and HA networks. Hybrid scaffolds also offered a wide range of pore size (66 – 126 μm) which fulfilled the criteria

for valvular tissue regeneration. Scanning electron micrographs (SEM) and images of Alcian blue – Periodic acid Schiff (PAS)

stained samples suggested that our crosslinking technique yielded an ECMmimicking microstructure with interlaced bands

of collagen and HA in the hybrid scaffolds. The mutually reinforcing networks of collagen and HA also resulted in increased

bending moduli up to 1660 kPa which spanned the range of natural aortic valves. Cardio sphere-derived cells (CDCs) from

rat hearts showed that crosslinking density affected the available cell attachment sites on the surface of the scaffold. In-

creased bending moduli of CDCs seeded scaffolds up to two folds (2 – 6 kPa) as compared to the non-seeded scaffolds (1

kPa) suggested that an increase in crosslinking density of the scaffolds could not only increase the in-vitro bending modulus

but also prevented its disintegration in the cell culture medium.