Investigating the effect of chitosan on hydrophilicity and bioactivity of conductive electrospun composite scaffold for neural tissue engineering

In this paper, nanofibers containing poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL), chitosan and polypyrrole (PPy) were fabricated using electrospinning to combine advantages of electrospun nanofibers topography with versatile advantages of chitosan and PPy. Various compositions of the PCL/chitosan/PPy polymeric scaffolds were fabricated by electrospinning and were analyzed for their surface topography, hydrophilicity and bioactivity. The results illustrated that chitosan in the scaffold imposed significant advancement in the hydrophilicity of the scaffold as confirmed by a decrease in contact angle up to 66% (123 ± 2.3 for PCL to 41.37 ± 3.51 for PCL/chitosan). The average diameter of the fibers was within the range of 30–180 nm, which influenced by the concentration of the chitosan as the increase up to 30% in chitosan content decreased fiber diameter from 124 nm to 36 nm. In-vitro studies using PC12 cells revealed that the PCL/chitosan/PPy nanofibrous scaffold supports cell attachment, spreading and revealed significant increase in proliferation up to 356% in comparison to Pure PCL and neurite extension of PC12. The results indicated the PCL/chitosan/PPy nanofibrous scaffolds support the adhesion, spreading and proliferation of the PC12 cells. Therefore, this scaffold could serve as promising neural tissue substitutes.