Manipulating Air-Gap Electrospinning to Create Aligned Polymer Nanofiber-Wrapped Glass Microfibers for Cortical Bone Tissue Engineering

Osteons are the repeating unit throughout cortical bone, consisting of canals filled with blood and nerve vessels surrounded by concentric lamella of hydroxyapatite-containing collagen fibers, providing mechanical strength. Creating a biodegradable scaffold that mimics the osteon structure is crucial for optimizing cellular infiltration and ultimately the replacement of the scaffold with native cortical bone. In this study, a modified air-gap electrospinning setup was exploited to continuously wrap highly aligned polycaprolactone polymer nanofibers around individual 1393 bioactive glass microfibers, resulting in a synthetic structure similar to osteons. By varying the parameters of the device, scaffolds with polymer fibers wrapped at angles between 5–20° to the glass fiber were chosen. The scaffold indicated increased cell migration by demonstrating unidirectional cell orientation along the fibers, similar to recent work regarding aligned nerve and muscle regeneration. The wrapping decreased the porosity from 90% to 80%, which was sufficient for glass conversion through ion exchange validated by inductively coupled plasma. Scaffold degradation was not cytotoxic. Encapsulating the glass with polymer nanofibers caused viscoelastic deformation during three-point bending, preventing typical brittle glass fracture, while maintaining cell migration. This scaffold design structurally mimics the osteon, with the intent to replace its material compositions for better regeneration.