Optically transparent Eudragit nanofibrous membrane with potential use in ocular tissue engineering

The development of biocompatible and transparent materials is desirable for ocular tissue engineering. Eudragit polymers are variously used in pharmaceutical excipient due to their desired properties in biological environment. Due to these mentioned applications, we created an optically transparent Eudragit nanofibrous membrane. Euderagit L100 was electrospun with concentrations of 15, 17 and 20% (w/v) in ethanol/dimethylformamide solvent. To produce a transparent membrane, nanofibers were impregnated with a resin containing Eudragit RS100 (10 %w/v) and polyethylene glycol 400 (20% w/w based on polymer weight) by drop-casting method. Finally, properties of transparent membranes such as light transmission and cell viability were investigated. Due to the proximity of refractive indexes of nanofiber polymer and resin polymers, transparent nanofibrous membranes with maximum visible light transmission (57.36% at 720 nm) obtained. Increasing the diameter of nanofibers from 570 nm to 1614 nm reduced the light transmission to 8.5%. Biological experiments also showed that transparent membrane and nanofibrous mat do not have a negative effect on the metabolic activity of human fibroblasts cells. This transparent membrane may find extensive applications in future for the development of ocular tissue engineering scaffolds.