Perspectives of chitosan nanofiber/film scaffolds with bone marrow stromal cells in tissue engineering and wound dressing

Objective (s): Several methods have been proposed for repairing defects and damages, one of which is cell therapy. Bone marrow stromal cells seem to be suitable for this purpose. On the other hand, many biometric materials are used to improve and correct the defects in the body. Nanofibers are widely used in the medical industry, especially in tissue engineering, as scaffolds in wound healing and wound dressing. Chitosan/polyethylene oxide nanofibers can be a suitable replacement for routine wound coverages. Hence, this study was conducted to present a combination of these methods. Materials and Methods: Chitosan/polyethylene oxide nanofibers and thin films of chitosan were produced and optimized by electron microscopy, on which the bone marrow stromal cells were then cultivated. Interactions between the cells and these biomaterials were investigated through viability, morphology, immunocytochemistry and electron microscopy of cells after 6 days. All data were analyzed using Student's t-test and one-way ANOVA tests in SPSS version 16. P<0.05 was considered significant. Results: It seems that the high viscosity of chitosan prevents the formation of nanofibers, while chitosan/polyethylene oxide solutions with 80/20 and 90/10 ratios produce perfect, regular, bead free and non-toxic nanofibers with average diameter of 240 +/- 10 and 220 +/- 10 nm, respectively. The results of immunocytochemistry and viability showed that the cells had relatively high proliferation on the thin chitosan membranes, while the results of the electron microscopy showed that the morphology of cells was better on the nanofibers than on the thin membrane of chitosan. Conclusion: Since bone marrow stromal cells were grown well on chitosan-nanofibers, each of them alone was used in the therapeutic methods. It is better to consider a combination of two methods as the treatment method, especially in tissue engineering and cell therapy.