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Collagen-Fibrinogen Lyophilised Scaffolds for Soft Tissue Regeneration

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Article

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Abstract

A significant body of research has considered collagen as a scaffold material for soft tissue regeneration. The main structural component of extra-cellular matrix (ECM), collagen’s advantages over synthetic polymers are numerous. However, for applications where higher stiffness and stability are required, significant cross-linking may affect bioactivity. A carbodiimide (EDC) cross-linking route consumes carboxylate groups that are key to collagen’s essential cell recognition motifs (GxOGER). Fibrinogen was considered as a promising additive as it plays a key role in the process of wound repair and contains RGD integrin binding sites which bind to a variety of cells, growth factors and cytokines. Fibrinogen’s binding sites however, also contain the same carboxylate groups as collagen. We have successfully produced highly interconnected, porous collagen-fibrinogen scaffolds using a lyophilisation technique and micro-computed tomography demonstrated minimal influence of either fibrinogen content or cross-linking concentration on the scaffold structure. The specific biological effect of fibrinogen additions into cross-linked collagen are considered by using films as a model for the struts of bulk scaffolds. By considering various additions of fibrinogen to the collagen film with increasing degrees of cross-linking, this study demonstrates a significant biological advantage with fibrinogen addition across the cross-linking concentrations typically applied to collagen-based scaffolds.

Description

Keywords

collagen, fibrinogen, adhesion, lyophilisation, micro-computed tomography

Journal Title

Materials

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Journal ISSN

1996-1944
1996-1944

Volume Title

10

Publisher

Multidisciplinary Publishing Institute
Sponsorship
European Research Council (320598)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/N019938/1)
The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the European Research Council for the Advanced Grant 320598 awarded to REC and the EPSRC for the Established Career Fellowship EP/N019938/1 awarded to REC and SMB. They also wish to acknowledge funding for DB from the Peoples Programme of the EU 7th Framework Programme (RAE no: PHF-GA-2013-624904).
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