All ETDs from UAB

Advisory Committee Chair

Andrei Stanishevsky

Advisory Committee Members

Namasivayam Ambalavanan

Cheng-Chien Chen

Alen Eberhardt

Ryoichi Kawai

Sergey Vyazovkin

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

2023

Degree Name by School

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) College of Arts and Sciences

Abstract

A biomaterial for tissue repair is globally sought after, as transplant surgeries and general wound healing have a strong need for a manufactured scaffold that mimics the natural body’s tissue in morphology, composition, and properties. This research presents a nanofibrous (NF) fish skin gelatin-based (FSG) substrate fabricated through an uncommon high-yield method of Alternating Current electrospinning that mimics that can mimic the natural body’s extracellular matrix (ECM). An ECM is the first step in tissue repair. Fabrication through electrospinning gave the NF FSG substrate an identical mimic of the natural body’s extracellular matrix morphology with nanofiber diameter on the order of 175 ± 19nm as spun. This nanofibrous FSG substrate is biocompatible having 10.2% cell confluence after 72 hours in a physiological environment. Additionally, it is bioactive as gelatin and other incorporated polysaccharides provide nutrients for wound repair. The FSG ECM is biomechanically viable as the stress-strain curve follows that of natural body tissue while the elastic moduli with post processing treatments in dry condition was 11.4 ± MPa and in wet conditions 35.1 ± 7.2kPa. The fabrication method of electrospinning is scale-up making the FSG ECM mass producible with a production rate of 12.6g/h. This nanofibrous FSG substrate is an innovative biomaterial platform as it retains ideal biomaterial properties of biocompatibility, bioactiveness, biomechanically viable, and mass-producible.

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