Novel 3D Electrospun Scaffoldswith Fibers OrientedRandomly and Evenly in Three Dimensions to Closely Mimic the UniqueArchitectures of Extracellular Matrices in Soft Tissues: Fabricationand Mechanism Study.

In this work, novel electrospun scaffolds with fibersorientedrandomly and evenly in three dimensions (3D) including in the thicknessdirection were developed based on the principle of electrostatic repulsion.This unique structure is different from most electrospun scaffoldswith fibers oriented mainly in one direction. The structure of novel3D scaffolds could more closely mimic the 3D randomly oriented fibrousarchitectures in many native extracellular matrices (ECMs). The cellculture results of this study indicated that, instead of becomingflattened cells when cultured in conventional electrospun scaffolds,the cells cultured on novel 3D scaffolds could develop into stereoscopictopographies, which highly simulated in vivo 3D cellular morphologiesand are believed to be of vital importance for cells to function anddifferentiate appropriately. Also, due to the randomly oriented fibrousstructure, improvement of nearly 5 times in cell proliferation couldbe observed when comparing our 3D scaffolds with 2D counterparts after7 days of cell culture, while most currently reported 3D scaffoldsonly showed 1.5- to 2.5-fold improvement for the similar comparison.One mechanism of this fabrication process has also been proposed andshowed that the rapid delivery of electrons on the fibers was thecrucial factor for formation of 3D architectures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]