Polyaniline–polycaprolactone–gelatin hybrid electrospun scaffolds for corneal tissue engineering

Scaffold-based tissue engineering has been widely used in recent years, in particular, the incorporation of a variety of synthetic and natural polymers has been used in scaffold creation. The field of tissue engineering benefits through expanding the library of biocompatible scaffolds. Optimising the fabrication of electrospinning multiple polymers contributes to that library. In particular, we are interested in optimising scaffolds with the incorporation of polyaniline (PANI) for potential corneal tissue engineering uses. We determined the optimal electrospinning parameters for PANI by including a synthetic polymer (polycaprolactone, PCL) and gelatin to create a scaffold with the ideal physical and mechanical properties of the end use. We found that the PANI-containing scaffolds observed higher cell counts and viability after 7 days. ZO-1 was found in increased expression with the corneal endothelial cells maintained on the surface of the PANI-containing scaffolds. Through our various cell-scaffold assays, we established that our PANI–PCL scaffolds are biocompatible and support the function of corneal endothelial cells.