Manufacture of PCL scaffolds through electrospinning technology to accommodate Triple Negative Breast Cancer cells culture

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) cell culture structures are demonstrated to differ from the in vivo environment. Therefore, cells adopt a flattened morphology that may lead to a non-physiological behaviour. For instance, 2D culture induces the differentiation of the cancer stem cells (CSCs), a tumorigenic cell niche whose study is crucial in tumors with a high relapse rate such as the triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). As an alternative, electrospun scaffolds which mimic the native extracellular matrix structure have emerged as a three-dimensional culture support. In this work, two different meshes of 7.5 and 15% of poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) were fabricated, differentiating in their microstructure. Scaffolds exhibited similar DSC and TGA curves compared with raw PCL, indicating their purity. TNBC MDA-MB-468 cells were seeded on scaffolds and adopted a more elongated morphology when cultured on 15% PCL meshes. Hence, electrospinning PCL scaffolds may become a suitable tool to culture TNBC cells in a more physiological manner.

This work was supported by Spanish grants from Fundación Ramón Areces and Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI1400329). The authors are grateful to the pre-doctoral grant (IFUdG2017/62), the support of the Catalan Government (2017SGR00385) and RadikalSwim (OncoSwim)