Polycaprolactone Electrospun Nanofiber Membrane with Skin Graft Containing Collagen and Bandage Containing MgO Nanoparticles for Wound Healing Applications

What is it about?

Our lab (Mel Vaughan's lab) has been fashioning skin equivalents as an experimental model for 25 years. Our goal in this study was to see how polycaprolactone membranes affected in vitro skin equivalent establishment and maturation. A histological cross section tends to look like very simplified skin (figure 7) without the sweat glands, hair follicles, nerves, etc. We found that skin equivalents could mature with a PCL membrane embedded within; however, the membrane provided a surface for tension maintenance (normal skin is under some amount of tension, so this could be a good thing). When TGF-beta was applied, we saw the appearance of myofibroblasts (figure 5); thus there was sufficient tension to allow this to occur. We were able to view the maturation over time (2-3 weeks) using optical coherence tomography (figure 6).

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Why is it important?

This is the first known paper to show skin equivalent structure and ongoing maturation using OCT; previously, histology had to be performed to determine if the skin equivalent was maturing properly. OCT saved us a lot of time and resources because we knew within a few days that the skin equivalent was maturing properly, and we could discard tissues that had already failed instead of keeping them in culture for a month.

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