A Research On 3d Liver Tissue Engineering Scaffolds With Silk Fibroin/Gelatin

Today, liver transplantation is still the only feasible treatment for middle and end-stage liver failure patient. But some problems are encountered in medicine application due to shortage of donated organs, complex of transplantation technology and high cost. Thus, using tissue engineering theories to make artificial liver is the common goal of clinicians and materials researcher.The three key elements of tissue engineering are seed cells, extracellular matrix materials (scaffolds) and tissue and organ regeneration. Firstly, to explore the making technology of three-dimensional hepatic scaffolds based on silk fibroin / gelatin(SF/G).Through controlling the temperature, concentration and after-treatment time, a three-dimensional homogeneous porous silk fibroin/gelatin scaffolds was successfully made by freeze-drying method. The morphology, structure, mechanical properties, porosity, swelling ratio, degradation rate and a series of physical properties of silk fibroin/gelatin scaffolds of different proportions were analyzed. The results show that the composite scaffolds had proper degradation rate, good mechanical properties. It can meet the requirements of tissue engineering.Liver tissue engineering requires the materials to have not only good physical and chemical properties, but also good biocompatibility. The SF/G scaffolds were in vivo implanted into subcutaneous tissue of SD rats, comparing with CS/G scaffolds to evaluate the biocompatibility of materials. The SF/G scaffolds resulted in slight inflammation and moderate degradation rate. The in vivo experiment has confirmed that the SF/G scaffolds would become excellent matrix for different tissue regenerations.Finally, in order to evaluate the structure of scaffolds. The SF/G porous scaffolds with micro-structure and multi-channel system were fabricated combining rapid prototyping, micro-replication and freeze-drying techniques. A novel in vitro dynamic culture platform was set up, comparing with conventional porous liver tissue engineering scaffolds, the novel bionic scaffolds could facilitate the cell proliferation, functional expression and blood vessels formation. Therefore, this kind of scaffold is promise to use in the liver tissue engineering.