| Peripheral nerve injury affects 2.8% of patients with trauma, presenting a critical clinical issue. The neurons regenerate their axons after injury and Schwann cells within the denervated nerve pathways support the regenerating axons. In the past decade, studies related to Schwann cells have mainly focused on delivering the cells to the repair site to promote neural cell growth but have not focused on enhancing the growth of Schwann cells to further help in increase the rate of axon regeneration. The goal of this project was to enhance the growth of Schwann cells by developing silk fibroin electrospun mats to mimic the hierarchical structure of the extracellular matrix in combination with biocompatible and biodegradable Fe3O4 nanoparticles with magnetic stimulations.;To accomplish this goal, varying concentrations of Fe3O 4 nanopowders were used with silk solution to prepare electrospun mats at different voltages. A series of experiments was carried out to characterize the electrospun mats such as Scanning Electron microscopy (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), X-Ray Powder Diffraction (XRD), Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID) magnetometer testing and Instron Mechanical testing. Schwann cells (ATCC) were seeded on the mats and Alamar blue cell viability studies revealed that the growth of Schwann cells was enhanced on the mats with 7 wt. % Fe3O4 on Day 1. In addition, magnetic silk fibroin electropun mats had no impact on the growth and proliferation of Schwann cells indicating that these mats had no cytotoxic effects on Schwann cells. Based on these results, magnetic silk fibroin electrospun mats could be pursued as scaffolds for neural tissue engineering. |
