| Two novel electrically conductive nanofibrous scaffolds based on chitosan-grafted polythiophene (CS-g-PTh),
and chitosan-grafted polythiophene/poly(ε-caprolactone) (CS-g-PTh/PCL) have been fabricated through electrospinning
technique, and their performances in tissue engineering (TE) application were preliminary investigated in terms of biological
(biocompatibility, biodegradability, and enhancing the cells adhesion and proliferation) as well as physicochemical (composition,
electroactivity, conductivity, hydrophilicity, and morphology) features. The conductivities of the CS-g-PTh and CS-g-PTh/
PCL nanofibrous scaffolds were determined as 0.09 and 8×10-3 Scm-1, respectively. The developed CS-g-PTh/PCL scaffold
exhibited slightly higher cells proliferation (8.24±0.49) than those of the CS-g-PTh scaffold (7.1±0.38) in time period of 7
days. The biodegradability tests using gravimetric approach revealed that the mass loss of CS-g-PTh and CS-g-PTh/PCL
electrospun nanofibers were about 28.1 and 37.3 wt.%, respectively at the end of experiments (sixth week). It was found that
the electrospinning of CS-g-PTh with PCL improves the nanofibers uniformity as well as the biological features (e.g.,
biocompatibility and cell proliferation) of the resultant hydrogel. |