Effects of Different Fibre Alignments and Bioactive Coatings on Mesenchymal Stem/Stromal Cell Adhesion and Proliferation in Poly (ɛ-caprolactone) Scaffolds towards Cartilage Repair

In this work, 3D biodegradable poly (epsilon-caprolactone) scaffolds with high porosity and interconnectivity were produced by extrusion and characterized in terms of their structural and mechanical properties. The effects of scaffold fibre alignment (0-45 degrees and 0-90 degrees) and of different adhesive coatings (Fibronectin, Gelatin and commercially available CELLstart (TM)) on bone marrow mesenchymal stem/stromal cells adhesion, migration and proliferation were evaluated using AlamarBlue (TM) assay. Fibronectin and CELLstart (TM) coated poly (epsilon-caprolactone) scaffolds presented an improvement in cell adhesion of approximately 2-fold relatively to the non-treated scaffolds, independently of fibre alignment. Overall, all the conditions studied promoted the growth and migration of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells in the fabricated poly(epsilon-caprolactone) scaffolds, without affecting their chondrogenic differentiation and extracellular matrix deposition evaluated by Alcian Blue staining. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nd/4.0/) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Sustainable and Intelligent Manufacturing.