Biochemical modification of biodegradable nanofibers

Abstract

Organ and tissue losses caused by a disease or a trauma can be treated by variety of sources such as; autograft, allograft and xenograft. Providing the cells from these sources have many disadvantages like; di culty of nding a suitable donor, rejection of the tissue by the body and immune system related problems. In order to overcome those problems tissue engineers try to produce required tissue in the laboratories with few cells which are taken from the patient. In this context, in order to fabricate desired tissue cultures, many e orts are going on development of various cell sca old materials, surfaces and biochemicals. Although our knowledge on this subject increases in time, more studies are needed to be done. In the purpose of this thesis, histidine and fetuin immobilized Poly- -caprolactone (PCL) membranes and nano ber meshes were prepared to enhance biocompatibility. PCL nano ber meshes were produced via electrospinning and PCL membranes by solvent casting method. For the surface modi- cation in the rst step, hexamethylenediamine (HMDA) was used to introduce amino groups onto the PCL surfaces. Histidine, and fetuin immobilization on amino groups of the surface carried out by using cyanamide and N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS). Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) were used for the characterization of modi- cations. The e ects of surface modi cation on cell proliferation were studied by using L929 broblast-like cells. MTT assay and cell cultures studies have shown that histidine modi ed PCL nano ber meshes have shown higher cell proliferation percentage than histidine modi ed PCL membranes and control groups within increasing histidine content. According to the results it was shown that PCL biocompatibility can be enhanced with such simple amino acid histidine and it is possible to use these surfaces in many di erent tissue engineering applications.|Keywords : Polycaprolactone, Nano ber, Histidine, Fetuin, Electrospinning.