Abstract
Magnetic electro spun fibers are of interest for minimally invasive biomaterial applications that also strive to provide cell guidance. Magnetic electro spun fibers can be injected and then magnetically positioned in situ, and the aligned fiber scaffolds provide consistent topographical guidance to cells. In this study, magnetically responsive aligned poly-l-lactic acid electro spun fiber scaffolds were developed and tested for neural applications. Incorporating oleic acid-coated iron oxide nanoparticles significantly increased neurite outgrowth, reduced the fiber alignment, and increased the surface nano topography of the electro spun fibers. After verifying neuron viability on two-dimensional scaffolds, the system was tested as an injectable three-dimensional scaffold. Small conduits of aligned magnetic fibers were easily injected in a collagen or fibrinogen hydrogel solution and repositioned using an external magnetic field. The aligned magnetic fibers provided internal directional guidance to neurites within a three-dimensional collagen or fibrin model hydrogel, supplemented with Matrigel. Neurites growing from dorsal root ganglion explants extended 1.4-3x farther on the aligned fibers compared with neurites extending in the hydrogel alone. Overall, these results show that magnetic electro spun fiber scaffolds can be injected and manipulated with a magnetic field in situ to provide directional guidance to neurons inside an injectable hydrogel. Most importantly, this injectable guidance system increased both neurite alignment and neurite length within the hydrogel scaffold.
Recommended Citation
C. D. Johnson and D. Ganguly and J. M. Zuidema and T. J. Cardinal and A. M. Ziemba and K. R. Kearns and S. M. McCarthy and D. M. Thompson and G. Ramanath and D. A. Borca-Tasciuc and S. Dutz and R. J. Gilbert, "Injectable, Magnetically Orienting Electrospun Fiber Conduits for Neuron Guidance," ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 356 - 372, American Chemical Society, Jan 2019.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.8b18344
Department(s)
Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
Keywords and Phrases
dorsal root ganglia; injectable; magnetic electrospun fibers; poly-l-lactic acid; spinal cord injury; topographical guidance
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
1944-8252; 1944-8244
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2025 American Chemical Society, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
09 Jan 2019
PubMed ID
30516370
Comments
National Science Foundation, Grant C30606GG