Controlling the thickness of an electrospun nanofibrous scaffold by altering its pore size has been shown to regulate cell behaviors such as cell infiltration into a three-dimensional (3D) scaffold. This is of great importance when manufacturing tissue-engineering scaffolds using an electrospinning process. In this study, we report the development of a novel process whereby additional aluminum foil layers were applied to the accumulated electrospun fibers of an existing aluminum foil collector, effectively reducing the incidence of charge buildup. Using this process, we fabricated an electrospun scaffold with a large pore (pore size >40 μm) while simultaneously controlling the thickness. We demonstrate that the large pore size triggered rapid infiltration (160 μm in 4 hours of cell culture) of individual endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) and rapid cell colonization after seeding EPC spheroids. We confirmed that the 3D, but not two-dimensional, scaffold structures regulated tubular structure formation by the EPCs. Thus, incorporation of stem cells into a highly porous 3D scaffold with tunable thickness has implications for the regeneration of vascularized thick tissues and cardiac patch development.
Keywords: electrospinning; nanofibrous scaffold; stem cell; tunable thickness; vascularization.