Electrospinning Better Cell Scaffolds to Fight Cancer

Biomedical engineers at Michigan Technological University  are using electrospun synthetic polymers to build scaffolds for cancer tumor research, removing the need for animal testing. An electrospinner is a machine that uses electric fields to manipulate polymers to weave fine, nano-scale fibers into matrices. When cells grow inside the body, they require an extra-cellular matrix (ECM) on which to grow. “Synthetic ECMs are created by electrospinning matrices from polymers such as polycaprolactone and are more consistent for research than using cells from different kinds of animals,” says doctoral student Samerender Hanumantharao. The engineers changed the voltage at which the polymer is spun, allowing them to alter the shape of the scaffolds.

Transcript

00:00:00 So in my lab, we are focused on using synthetic materials to make nanostructures, nanofibers, and microfibers using a process known as electrospinning in which essentially an electric field is used to pull a synthetic polymer solution across two electrodes. And by controlling these parameters that make up the electric field, we can now generate fibers with different patterns. So just by changing these parameters,

00:00:33 we can now get different structures. The advantage is we can retain the chemical structure of these materials. That is the chemistry remains the same. So now we have eliminated one more variable from the experiment set. So when we carry out experiments with different cell lines on these nanofiber platforms, we can truly say that it is an apple to apple comparison. In this present day and age where

00:00:57 there is a lot more interest in the interaction between cells and nanostructures, removing that variability of the material involved will add to valuable information.