Electrospun silk fibroin fibers for storage and controlled release of human platelet lysate.

Publication date: Available online 17 April 2018
Source:Acta Biomaterialia
Author(s): Cataldo Pignatelli, Giovanni Perotto, Marta Nardini, Ranieri Cancedda, Maddalena Mastrogiacomo, Athanassia Athanassiou
Human platelet lysate (hPL) is a pool of growth factors and cytokines able to induce regeneration of different tissues. Despite its good potentiality as therapeutic tool for regenerative medicine applications, hPL has been only moderately exploited in this field. A more widespread adoption has been limited because of its rapid degradation at room temperature that decreases its functionality. Another limiting factor for its extensive use is the difficulty of handling the hPL gels. In this work, silk fibroin-based patches were developed to address several points: improving the handling of hPL, enabling their delivery in a controlled manner and facilitating their storage by creating a device ready to use with expanded shelf life. Patches of fibroin loaded with hPL were synthesized by electrospinning to take advantage of the fibrous morphology. The release kinetics of the material was characterized and tuned through the control of fibroin crystallinity. Cell viability assays, performed with primary human dermal fibroblasts, demonstrated that fibroin is able to preserve the hPL biological activity and prolong its shelf-life. The strategy of storing and preserving small active molecules within a naturally-derived, protein-based fibrous scaffold was successfully implemented, leading to the design of a biocompatible device, which can potentially simplify the storage and the application of the hPL on a human patient, undergoing medical procedures such as surgery and wound care.Statement of significanceHuman platelets lysate (hPL) is a mixture of growth factors and cytokines able to induce the regeneration of damaged tissues. In this study, we aim at enclosing hPL in a silk fibroin electrospun matrix to expand its utilization. Silk fibroin showed the ability to preserve the hPL activity at temperature up to 60 °C and the manipulation of fibroin's crystallinity provided a tool to modulate the hPL release kinetic. This entails the possibility to fabricate the hPL silk patches in advance and store them, resulting in an easy and fast accessibility and expand the use of hPL for wound healing.

Graphical abstract

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