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Controlling Pore Size of Electrospun Vascular Grafts by Electrospraying of Poly(Ethylene Oxide) Microparticles

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Vascular Tissue Engineering

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 2375))

Abstract

Electrospinning has become a popular polymer processing technique for application in vascular tissue engineering due to its unique capability to fabricate porous vascular grafts with fibrous morphology closely mimicking the natural extracellular matrix (ECMs). However, the inherently small pore sizes of electrospun vascular grafts often inhibit cell infiltration and impede vascular regeneration. Here we describe an effective and controllable method to increase the pore size of electrospun poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) vascular graft. With this method, composite grafts are prepared by turning on or off electrospraying of poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) microparticles during the process of electrospinning PCL fibers. The PEO microparticles are used as a porogen agent and can be subsequently selectively removed to create a porogenic layer within the electrospun PCL grafts. Three types of porogenic PCL grafts were constructed using this method. The porogenic layer was either the inner layer, the middle one, or the outer one.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) projects (81772000, 81530059, 91939112), NSFC Research Fund for International Young Scientists (81850410552), and Tianjin Natural Science Foundation (18JCZDJC37600).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Bioactive Materials, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China

    Muhammad Rafique, Adam C. Midgley, Tingting Wei, Lianyong Wang, Deling Kong & Kai Wang

Authors
  1. Muhammad Rafique
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  2. Adam C. Midgley
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  3. Tingting Wei
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  4. Lianyong Wang
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  5. Deling Kong
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  6. Kai Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kai Wang .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Feng Zhao

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Kam W. Leong

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© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

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Rafique, M., Midgley, A.C., Wei, T., Wang, L., Kong, D., Wang, K. (2022). Controlling Pore Size of Electrospun Vascular Grafts by Electrospraying of Poly(Ethylene Oxide) Microparticles. In: Zhao, F., Leong, K.W. (eds) Vascular Tissue Engineering. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2375. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1708-3_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1708-3_13

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  • Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-1707-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-1708-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Protocols

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