ABSTRACT

Electrospun Nanofibers and Nanoyarn for Tissue Engineering

Electrospinning nanofiber can biomimetic Extracellular Matrix and suitable for tissue scaffolding. In our group of collagen-chitosan complex nanofibers have been fabricated for skin tissue engineering, collagen-chitosan-P (LLA-CL) nanofibers tube scaffold have been fabricated for blood vessel tissue engineering, silk-P(LLA-CL) nanofibers tube scaffold have been fabricated for nerve tissue engineering.

Electrospinning fabrication technique most commonly produces relatively 2D mats and the construction 3D structure nanofibers with higher porosity is still a major challenge. In our research, two methods were used to fabricate the 3D nanofiber scaffolds. A dynamic electrospinning method were developed to fabricate the nanoyarn scaffold. The nanoyarn scaffold contained 3D aligned microstructures with larger interconnected pores and higher porosity comparing with nanofiber scaffold. The nanoyarn scaffold have been successfully used for tendon tissue regeneration of rabbit. Gelatin/PLA nanofiberous 3D scaffold was fabricated by using combined electrospinning and freeze-drying methods. Thus obtained 3D nanofiber scaffold could promote cells growth and proliferation, it also been used for cartilage tissue engineering in rabbit.

BIOGRAPHY

Professor Xiumei Mo is a professor at Biomaterials in Donghua University, China. Previously, she had two years of experience as a Post- Doctoral in Kyoto University and three years of experience as Research Fellow in National University of Singapore (NUS). She was also a visiting professor in Aachen University of Applied Science and Technology, Germany. In Donghua University, she was granted with 35 projects related with nanofiber fabrication for different tissue regeneration and hydrogel as tissue adhesive. To date, she had published more than 350 papers and her publications are ranked at the 7th most highly cited journals in ISI Web of Science due to her work on electrospun nanofiber.

She received several awards such as Science Technical Invention Awards from Shanghai Municipality (2008), Science and Technology Progress Awards from State Department of People’s Republic of China (2009), and Nature Science Awards from Shanghai Government (2015). She is currently the committee members of China Biomaterials Society as well as Biomedical Engineering Society Biomaterials Branch.