Study Of Highly Porous Poly-L-Lactide-Based Composites With Chitosan And Collagen

Increased interest in the field of tissue engineering promotes the development of biomaterial design. Aspiration to reconstruct native extracellular matrix architecture (ECM) expands the number of applying approaches in polymer scaffold development. In the present work, we proposed a combination of electrospinning and lyophilization techniques to produce materials with ECM-like morphology based on poly-l-lactide fiber matrix with natural bio-adequate fillers (collagen and chitosan). Morphology, mechanical properties, and hydrophilicity of the developed biomaterials were studied. The introduction of the collagen filler enhanced the strength and Young's modulus of the composites by 190% and 80%. The same characteristics of the chitosan-containing material were increased by 430% and 340%, respectively. It exceeded the collagen ones, which was caused by the better chitosan penetration into the fiber matrix and, as a result, the percolation network formation. The possibility of material wettability improving was shown.