Preparation of Plastic Compressed Nanostructured Collagen Hydrogel Scaffold Containing Skin Fibroblasts as a Construct for Skin Repair

Background and Objective: Nanostructured collagen hydrogel scaffolds have the ability to use for skin tissue engineering. Its challenge to heal the wound in full-thickness skin defect. In this study, collagen type 1 was extracted from rat tail tendon. Materials and Methods: For preparing hydrogel the collagen was dissolved in acetic acid and re-neutralized at 37 °C. In plastic compression method due applying force to collagen hydrogel, a part of hydrogel water was removed after that compact scaffolds were made. The scaffolds were seeded with fibroblasts cell as a 3-D culture. The mechanical properties, wet weight, weight loss, scaffold morphology, cell morphology, cell viability and histopathology in both of the scaffolds (compressed and uncompressed) were assayed. Findings: The results illustrated the compressed hydrogel collagen had less weight loss than the uncompressed hydrogel and also the mechanical properties showed improving in tensile stress (0.3± 0.01 MPa) and young modulus (0.55 ± 0.01) for compressed collagen hydrogel, which was cultured with cells. SEM images confirmed the compressing of hydrogel collagen scaffolds. In addition, collagen was fibrillated and it has 90 to 140 nm in diameter. The cell viability was assayed for two groups of the scaffold. It was shown in both of scaffolds the cell viability was more than 90% after the 14 days. There was no significant difference. Hematoxylin and eosin revealed presence of cells in deep of scaffold. Conclusion:Fibroblasts showed spindle-shape morphology. It was shown that the compressed collagen hydrogel has the ability to maintain the cell viability and hair follicle. Hence, it can be used as a scaffold for skin tissue engineering.

کلیدواژه ها:

Collagen hydrogel ، Plastic compression ، Skin ، Tissue engineering