Evaluation of recombinant human collagen-peptide based porous scaffolds and molecular interaction with chitosan

The chemical composition, physical structure, and biologically functional moieties are all important to biomaterials for tissue engineering, a recombinant human collagen-peptide (RHC) with high water-solubility obtained in our laboratory was investigated for biomedical application in this paper. Recombinant human collagen-peptide scaffold and a set of complex with chitosan (RHCC scaffolds) were fabricated by lyophilisation. Precipitated reaction of proanthocyanidin (PA) with RHC, chitosan or RHC-chitosan composite exhibited hydrogen bonding interaction between RHC and chitosan. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) characterisation and deconvolution analysis also represented that the carboxide in RHC and amino in chitosan would impact the reaction. Physicochemical and biological characterisation were applied for further potential application of this RHC-chitosan composite in skin tissue engineering. Different ratio of RHC to chitosan played significant influence on scaffold properties, the optimised RHCC-11 (RHC ratio equally to chitosan) represented homogenous porous structure with pore size of 96.44 +/- 6.82 mm, porosity over 90% and swelling of 24.75. In vitro, RHCC-11 scaffold extraction exhibited no cell toxicity on human dermal fibroblasts (HDFs), moreover, the cell morphology had not been affected under Acridine Orange/Ethidium Bromide (AO/EB) fluorescence staining. However, further investigation is necessary for direct application in tissue engineering based on the rapid biodegradation.