Organic Solvent Traces in Fibrillar Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering

In the present study the amount of xylene remaining in fibrillar scaffolds after their manufacture has been estimated by means of Gas Chromatrography coupled to Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). For this purpose model scaffolds of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) comprised of microfibrils with diameters of ~1 µm or nanofibrils with diameters of 50-150 nm as well as microfibrillar scaffolds of poly(glycolic acid) (PGA) have been used. An extremely low initial amount of xylene has been found (< 20 ppm). The xylene amount dropped below 2 ppm after drying for 24 h in a vacuum at 80°C. The microfibrillar PGA scaffolds, initially containing more xylene (23.4 ppm), retained only 3.6 ppm after drying for 24 h. After drying for 48 h the amount of xylene in all the scaffolds studied reached the detection limits of the GC-MS apparatus (< 0.5 ppm).