Sharif Digital Repository

Skin, the largest organ in the body, presents sophisticated functions for maintaining the structural integrity of the entire body. Skin can regulate the temperature of the body, protect the body against microorganisms, have a sensory function, and produce vitamin-D through UV exposure when in direct sunlight.Due to the self-healing property of skin tissue, skin can be repaired by itself. Nevertheless, if extensive skin loss happens, owing to diabetic ulcers or deep burns, skin will not be able to repair the wound by itself. Therefore, it will lose its functions, and the fabrication of a skin equivalent will be necessary. These skin equivalents will cover the wound, regenerate the native... 

Osteoarthritis has always been one of the most common diseases in middle age because it causes severe pain and inflammation in the joints of the body. Cartilage tissue does not have the ability to repair itself. For this reason, fabricating and designing the most efficient, least-expensive, and most convenient methods for the treatment of cartilage defects is always an important issue. Today, there are surgical and injectable methods to relieve pain and initiate the body's natural healing response. But due to the many disadvantages and limitations of these methods, tissue engineering science has turned to modifying these methods or providing new methods. One of these methods is the use of... 

Fabrication and characterization of different surface charged cellulose electrospun scaffolds including cellulose acetate, cellulose, carboxymethyl cellulose and quaternary ammonium cationic cellulose for biomedical applications have been reported in this research. We describe preparation of cellulosic nanofibers through the electrospinning following deacetylation cellulose acetate. Moreover, surface modification of electrospun cellulose nanofibers is carried out to obtain carboxymethyl cellulose and quaternized cellulose nanofibers, respectively. At last, the structural, morphological, mechanical, swelling, wettability and the cell culture properties of the scaffolds were analyzed and... 

Bone scaffolds are combinations of several materials, for achieving suitable properties and usage for replacing with defected bone. In this study, TCP/Agarose scaffolds are fabricated by two different approaches. The first one is using polymer sponge and gel casting technique and the other one is using foaming agent in order to obtain scaffolds with same porosity. The results show that in spite of same structure and porosity, scaffolds have different mechanical properties due to their different morphologies. Compressive strength of the scaffolds which were fabricated using polymer sponge method is 2.25MPa and elastic modulus is 56.8MPa. After coating with Agarose, compressive strength... 

Wound healing by engineered scaffolds is a new step in bio-technology and medical studies in recent years. The goal of the current study is to propose a novel structure for a tissue-engineered scaffold to be used in wound healing. Influenced from the multi-layered structure of natural human skin, the fabricated scaffold consists of two layers to maximize similarity with natural skin. This product is comprised of an electrospun layer made of polycaprolactone and polyvinyl alcohol and a hydrogel layer made of chitosan and gelatin. In order to form a porous medium in the hydrogel layer, freeze-gelation was used instead of freeze drying. The evaluation of fabricated scaffolds was performed by... 

Poly (lactate-co-glycolate) is a typical biocompatible and biodegradable synthetic polymer. Addition of TiO2 nanoparticles improved compressive modulus of PLGA scaffolds and reduced fast degradation. Porous 3D scaffolds, which are synthesized using biocompatible and biodegradable materials, could provide suitable microenvironment and mechanical support for optimal cell growth and function. A novel method has been applied to fabricate PLGA/TiO2 scaffolds without using any organic solvent or porogen for nucleation compared to former ways, with aim of improving the biocompatibility, macroscale morphology and well inter-connected pores efficacy: Air-Liquid Foaming. Adjustment of the foaming... 

Biocompatible porous polymeric scaffolds provide a suitable 3-D environment for proliferation of stem cells in human body. For instance, growth and proliferation concurrent with differentiation of stem cells in such scaffolds can regenerate the tissues or organs. In this attitude we fabricated a porous Gelatin-based scaffold using both of freeze-drying and freeze-extraction methods.Also, effect fo gamma irradiation on microstructure of scaffolds was investigated. In addition, poly(ethylene glycol) was employed to make the scaffold softer. Moreover, effects of various parameters including freezing temperature, cross-linking agent concentration, gelatin and PEG concentrations and their... 

Skin as the largest organ of the body is constructed of three distinctive layers referred to as epidermis, dermis, and hypodermis. Epidermis is the outermost layer of the skin and acts as body’s first barrier against infectious agents and contains mostly sweat glands. Dermis is the mid-layer of the skin which makes up to 70% of the skin and plays a significant role in maintaining body’s metabolism and is home to a huge part of skin’s vascular network, nerve cells and hair follicles. Hypodermis on other hand, is the deepest layer of the skin and mainly acts as a bonding layer between upper skin layers and the soft tissue underneath. Although skin is proved to have a profound ability to... 

In this work, we have used a 3D printer and unidirectional ice-templating technique in conjunction, to fabricate a novel composite scaffold to facilitate local osteochondral defects tissue regeneration with a cell-free approach. Using ice-templating to induce radially-aligned porosity formation in type I bovine collagen is known to expedite host cells' migration into the scaffold which their ECM secretion shifts cellular milieu toward that of its neighboring tissue layer. We used numerical analysis to design and optimize appropriate freeze-casting mold, finding the optimum value for pin height and metal slab depth to be 4mm and 14mm, respectively. Collagen content equivalent to 2%w/v was... 

Pulp necrosis in immature teeth disrupts root development and predisposes roots to fracture as a consequence of their thin walls and open apices. Regenerative endodontics is a developing treatment modality whereby necrotic pulps are replaced with newly formed healthy pulp-like tissue. Many clinical studies have demonstrated the potential of this strategy to stimulate root maturation and apical root-end closure. However, clinical outcomes are patient-dependent and unpredictable. The development of predictable clinical protocols is achieved through the interplay of the three classical elements of tissue engineering, namely, stem cells, signaling molecules, and scaffolds. Scaffolds provide... 

Once damaged, articular cartilage has very little capacity for spontaneous healing because of the avascular nature of the tissue. Although many repair techniques have been proposed over the past decades, none has successfully regenerated long-lasting tissue to replace damaged cartilage. Tissue engineering have recently demonstrated tremendous approaches for regeneration of cartilage tissue lesions. Tissue engineering is based on three principles: cells, scaffolds for cell adhesion and growth factors. Three-dimensional biodegradable scaffolds play an important role in tissue engineering. In this study, novel cross-linked hybrid chitosan/ECM scaffolds were prepared for articular cartilage... 

Interconnected–pore titanium scaffolds were fabricated by sintering of compressed mixture of TiH1.924 and urea or NaCl. Urea was removed by evaporation during sintering and NaCl was removed with water. TiH1.924 was used to enhance gas evolution for perpetuation of foam formation. Morphological studies of the spacer-removed scaffolds showed that the spacer shapes were replicated to the pores. Minimization of stress concentration at walls of the pores was, hence, helped by utilization of the spacers with spherical particles. The scaffolds having relative densities of 0.34 to 0.65 consisted pores of 200 to 600 μm diameter, compression strengths of 51 to 260 MPa, Young’s modulus of 6.3 to 22.66... 

Hemophilia is a group of hereditary genetic disorders that impair the body's ability to control blood clotting due to the lack of coagulation factors. Frequent joint and soft tissue bleeding is one the most common problems amongst these patients which can become progressively destructive for cartilage tissue in case of the late treatment. In this work, injectable PEG-based hydrogel nanocomposites with mechanical and structural properties close to cartilage tissue were fabricated. First, primary copolymers with PEG blocks of 600 g.mol-1 and 900 g.mol-1 without and with 2.5 wt.% Laponite nanoclay were synthesized by two-step thermal poly (amic acid) process. After polymer purification,... 

Tissue regeneration by bio-compatible/degradable scaffolds is one of the widely used approaches in the field of tissue engineering. In this study, a thermoplastic starch based nanocomposite scaffold with gradient structure was fabricated by unidirectional freeze drying method. To increase the stability of the scaffold in the aqueous media, PVA was added to starch solution. Then, the PVA and starch molecules were cross-linked by adding citric acid to the mixture. On the one hand, to improve the mechanical properties of the scaffold, and control its bio-degradability on the other, cellulose nano-fibers were employed. Also, the bioactivity of the scaffold was induced by using hydroxyapatite... 

Nerve damage is one of the factors affecting the quality of life of patients. The nervous system does not have the ability to repair large injuries, and autologous transplantation, which is the standard treatment method for nerve injuries, is faced with a shortage of donors and a decrease in the function of the donor site. Tissue engineering hydrogels, due to their similarity to the natural tissue of the stomatal body, are a hope for the repair of nerve tissue. In this research, an injectable, minimally invasive and temperature-sensitive hydrogel based on chitosan-etaglycerophosphate-sodium hydrogen carbonate salt or trisodium phosphate salt containing aligned nanofibers made of gelatin and... 

Myocardial infarction (MI) is one of the diseases caused by the temporary or permanent cramp of major coronary arteries. Due to this blockage, blood flow to the heart's myocardial tissue is greatly reduced and finally the person suffered from a Heart stroke (HS). Heart tissue engineering is a promising approach, based on the combination of cells and suitable biomaterials to develop and create heart-like biological substitutes. Since high cardiac cell density, providing metabolic needs like oxygen and nutrients was a challenge. So creation of blood vessel networks within this type of designed tissue has been considered very much.The purpose of this project is to construct scaffolds with... 

The goal of this research project was to prepare gelatin/PVA porous scaffolds by chemical and gamma irradiation methods to be used for human dermal fibroblast cell culture. First, the polymers were dissolved in hot water and mixed properly to achieve a homogenous solution. The mixture was then frozen at -200C and immersed in ethanol/ glutaraldehyde solution at -200C for 48 hours in order to extract ice crystals and also form chemical crosslinks in gelatin by glutaraldehyde. After being rinsed with distilled water the samples were lyophilized. The effects of polymers solution concentration, gelatin/PVA ratio and glutaraldehyde /gelatin ratio were investigated on characteristics of the... 

This project aimed to fabricate the bone scaffolds with applying thermoplastic starch-based nano-biocomposites. The starting materials for this scaffold are as follows: thermoplastic starch, ethylene vinyl alcohol as the polymer matrix and nanoforsterite as the ceramic reinforcing phase. Furthermore, vitamin E was used as antioxidant for preserving starch against thermo-mechanical degradations. Likewise, 3D pore structure was developed using azo-dicarbonamide and water in injection moulding process. With blending thermoplastic starch and ethylene vinyl alcohol, some thermoplastic starch’s properties including degradation rate and water absorption were modified. In addition, having... 

In the past decades, electrospinning has been widely used for the production of micro/nanofibers. In spite of the simplicity and effectivity of the conventional electrospinning for fabricating nanofibers, compact structure and small pores of the nanofibers hinder the efficient penetration of analytes during the extraction process. In order to overcome this issue, an applicable strategy called wet electrospinnig has been employed to enlarge the pore size of the electrospun scaffolds. By applying this technique, a collector was placed at the bottom of a solvent bath and highly porous foam from polyamide nanofibers was produced immediately after freeze-drying (3D electrospinning)....