A simple and effective approach to produce tubular polysaccharide-based hydrogel scaffolds

The production of porous tubular scaffolds is of great interest in the field of tissue engineering, given the existence of several tubular structures in the human body. In this work, a methodology was developed for the fabrication of tubular-shaped scaffolds based on the casting of polymeric solutions by controlled crosslinking mediated by a semipermeable cast. The fabrication of hydrogel tubular scaffolds from chitosan-pectin polymeric mixtures (tCh-P, 3% w/v) was performed to attest the feasibility of the technique. Tubular structures with about 4.15 mm internal diameter and 1.55 mm wall thickness were produced. The structures are highly porous, presenting interconnected pores with average diameter of about 360 mu m. Seeding of human smooth muscle cells on the material was successfully achieved by using collagen gel to facilitate cell migration and retention inside the structure of the scaffold. The methodology herein proposed was successfully validated for the production of tubular constructs, opening new perspectives for the fabrication of matrices based on polymers that are passive of crosslinking with small molecules. Besides being an interesting approach to produce tubular scaffolds, this methodology can be considered an useful platform to obtain materials for drug screening and diagnostic studies. (c) 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019, 136, 48510.