Fabrication and Characterization of Polypyrrole Nanofibers and Its Application as a Tissue Engineering Scaffold

Keywords:
polypyrrole, nanofibers, astrocytes, cell culture

Abstract:
Recently, nanobiotechnology emerges as a new field studying and applying the nano-sciences into biotechnology. In particular, nanofibers have attracted the intention of biologists and engineers owing to their resemblance to the biopolymer in the natural environment such as the extracellular matrix in animal cells. In this study, we investigated the effects of polypyrrole nanofibers on the cellular behaviors. Our results reveal that there is a significant difference in astrocyte’s morphology when they are grown on different surfaces. While cells on nanofibers tended to have an elongated shape, cells on flat polypyrrole were star-like. On the other hand, not much difference in the proliferation rate was observed. Furthermore, we also fabricated a novel scaffold of PET with nanofeatures. We demonstrated that the effective pore size of the scaffold was comparably similar to that of the untreated PET. This is important to ensure adequate mass transfer in the culture. We performed a thirty day culture and demonstrated that this novel nano-/micro-scaffold was biocompatible and can potentially be used as a tissue engineering scaffold to support the long term culture of animal cells.

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Nanotech 2006 Conference Program Abstract