Controlled Vacuum Seeding as a Means of Generating Uniform Cellular Distribution in Electrospun Polycaprolactone (PCL) Scaffolds

A major challenge encountered in using electrospun scaffolds for tissue engineering is the non-uniform cellular distribution in the scaffold with increasing depth under normal passive seeding conditions. Because of the small surface pores, typically few microns in diameter, cells tend to congregate and proliferate on the surface much faster compared to penetrating the scaffold interior. In order to overcome this problem, we used a vacuum seeding technique on polycaprolactone electrospun scaffolds while using NIH 3T3 fibroblasts as the model cell system. This serves as a precursor to the bilayer skin model where the fibroblasts would be residing at an intermediate layer and the keratinocytes would be on the top. Vacuum seeding was used in this study to enhance fibroblasts seeding and proliferation at different depths. Our results show that the kinetics of cell attachment and proliferation were a function of varying vacuum pressure as well as fiber diameter. Cell attachment reached a maxima somewhere between 2–8 in. Hg vacuum pressure and fell for lower vacuum pressures presumably because of cell loss through the filtration process. Cell proliferation and collagen secretion over five days indicated that vacuum pressure did not affect cellular function adversely. We also compared the combined impact of scaffold architecture (400 nm versus 1100 nm average diameter fiber scaffolds) and vacuum pressure. At a given pressure, more cells were retained in the 400 nm scaffolds compared to 1100 nm scaffolds. In addition, the cell intensity profile shows cell intensity peak shift from the top to the inner layers of the scaffold by lowering the vacuum pressure from 0 in. Hg to 20 in. Hg. For a given vacuum pressure the cells were seeded deeper within the 1100 nm scaffold. The results indicate that cells can be seeded in electrospun scaffolds at various depths in a controlled manner using a simple vacuum seeding technique. The depth of seeding is a function of pressure and scaffold fiber diameter.