Aligned electrospun siloxane-doped vaterite/poly(l-lactide) composite fibremats: evaluation of their tensile strength and cell compatibility

Siloxane-doped vaterite (SiV)/poly(L-lactide) hybrid-composite (SiPVH) has been developed in our group as the bone repair material and successfully fabricated into a non-woven electrospun fibremat. The aim of this work is to prepare aligned electrospun SiPVH fibremats with varied SiV content and compare their tensile properties and cell compatibilities using mouse osteoblast-like cells. It was observed that the maximum stress exhibited some non-linear trend as a function of SiV content: the highest stress value was reached with 30 wt.% SiV and decreased significantly with more than 40 wt.% SiV. Cellular morphology and proliferation were taken under examination on both aligned and random electrospun SiPVH fibremats. The cells started to orient themselves only 3 h after seeding on the aligned fibremat and they continued to elongate along the fibres. The number of the cells cultured up to seven days on both random and aligned fibremats was well comparable; therefore the alignment did not show negative effect on the cellular proliferation.