Scaffold obtention for human skin grafts

Abstract

The scientific and medical communities are showing great interest in tissue engineering to solve issues regarding donor tissues, wound healing and drug delivery systems. For this mean, nanofibers are being studied for their excellent mechanical properties and morphological similarities to the extracellular matrix. This project focus on the obtention of different scaffolds composed by PLA and lanolin layers and their analysis to evaluate which one mimics better the human skin properties. The main focus will be to analyse the permeability of the samples to accomplish the most resemblance to the human skin permeability. In addition, the study of the most outer layer will also be done to evaluate the migration of lanolin through the PLA layers. The tests performed evaluate the zeta potential, the contact angle and the TEWL values of the samples to have different methods to evaluate their hydrophobicity and permeability. In addition, a SEM and FTIR spectroscopy analysis were done to evaluate the composition and organization of the most outer layer of the samples. The results show that the scaffold composed by 8 PLA layers and 3 lanolin layers have a TEWL value between 8.7 and 11 g/(m2·h), which is found in the range of healthy human skin, 2,3 to 44 g/(m2·h)