Coaxial electrospun PCL/PVA-chitosan nanofibers: A novel non-viral gene delivery scaffold

In the field of tissue engineering, resembling the morphology and structure of extracellular matrix (ECM) is the main objective. ECM is a porous and fibrous structure which provides structural and biochemical support to the surrounding cells. Nowadays, electrospinning made scaffolds, which have controllable membrane thickness, fine structure and large surface area to volume ratio are commonly used for mimicking ECM¹. In addition to their biomimicry, those scaffolds can also be used for gene delivery studies. In this research, a nanofibrous scaffold made of polycaprolactone (PCL) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-chitosan was fabricated by coaxial electrospinning. PCL was used as the shell solution and PVA-chitosan mixture was used as the core solution. The surface of the fibers was treated with O2 plasma for improving cell adhesion by increasing hydrophilicity. A significant increase in surface hydrophilicity was found by contact angle measurements². In further studies, plasmid loading into chitosan will be carried out. After cell seeding, gene transfection efficiencies of the scaffolds with and without plasma treatment will be compared. This new bioactive scaffold will be used in gene delivery studies.