Novel Electrospun-Knitted Silk Scaffolds for Ligament Tissue Engineering.

Scaffold technology is integral in advancing tissue engineering as an alternative treatment for ligament related injuries. Bombyx mori silk, though used as biomedical suture for decades due to its excellent mechanical properties, biocompatibility and biodegradability, has recently been considered for ligament tissue engineering applications. The objective of this research is to construct a full silk-based scaffold and to investigate its potential for ligament tissue engineering applications. The scaffold was constructed by knitting silk fibres, followed by the removal of sericin. The knitted silk scaffold was then electrospun with silk nano fibers, forming a micro-nano composite structure. This resulting micro-nano silk scaffold, after a 28 day in vitro cell culture, was found to have better composite-material integrity, a longer in-vitro degradation period, and better cell adhesion than previous PLGA-based scaffolds. Good cell proliferation and collagen growth were also observed throughout the 28 day in vitro cell culture. Additional investigation and innovations by this paper includes a novel tensile pull test method of single aligned electrospun fibers, a novel inclined electrospinning technique for better nano-micro fiber integration and a degradation test between Silk and PLGA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]