Innovative 3D biotextiles with potential for bone tissue engineering applications

Bone tissue engineering represents a specialised niche within the biomedical field to which textile technologies can markedly contribute.Textile-based technologies are considered as potential routes for the production of scaffolds for TE applications, as they present superior control over design and reproducibility. This workaims at developing novel 2D/3D textile structures based on different polymeric materials and to engineer their surfaces in order to promote and control cell adhesion and proliferation.

Natural polymerssuch as silk andpolybutylene succinate (PBS) are herein proposed and processed into differentknitted 2D/3D structures. Furthermore, different surface modifications were performed (acid/alkaline treatment, UV radiation and plasma)for increasing cell adhesion and proliferation.  The immobilization of different proteins onthe surface of modifiedmaterialswas also performed. All textile constructswere characterized in terms of porosity, morphology and mechanicalproperties by µ-CT, SEM and DMA analysis. The effectiveness of the surface modifications was assessed by FTIR, XPSand contact angle measurements.

The obtained constructs present very reproducible intra-architectural scaffold geometry withhigh surface area andexhibiting a wide range ofporosities. Bythe above mentioned techniquesit was possible to validatethe effectiveness of the proposed treatments in modifying the surfaceof the materials.Cell adhesion and proliferation studies with L929 fibroblasts allowedto validate the developed constructs for the proposed application.By the proposed textile methodologies it was possible todevelop a diversity of constructs with a wide range of porosities and surface area. The effective modificationandimmobilization of biomolecules on the surface of the biotextiles are important outcomes that are expected to have a positive impact in their biological performance.