PhD Scientific Days 2021

TT_II_L: Theoretical and Translational Medicine II. Lectures

Creating and Characterizing Three Dimensional Electrospun Matrices

Text of the abstract

Huge amount of polymers are used for a wide range of medical or pharmaceutical purposes. The technologies and new materials are constantly developing.The bases of such materials are coming from polymers which can be found in nature. Criteria of using these polymers are to be biocompatible and biodegradable, so not to cause immune reaction and after degradation build into the living system. Nanotechnology reached to the point to be able to create artificial matrices which have fiber diameters like in the living organism. The method of electrospinning is a widely investigated and used technique for creating nano and microfibres which has a wide range of medical and pharmaceutical applications. For cell culturing and tissue engineering it is a greatly investigated method because it resembles the extracellular matrix. Changing the electrospinning parametres we can affect the properties to fine tune it for our needs. To create a high porosity fibrous mesh for culturing different cells in a suitable 3D way, we need to step forward from conventional electrospinning.
My aim was to create 3D fiber structures from Poly(succinimide) with the help of electrospinning. Therefore, the effect of different inorganic salts were investigated. The scaffolds were analyzed with the help of Scanning Electron Microscopy and Raman spectroscopy.To understand the effect of salt on the resulting meshes characterization of the ion-ion and ion-solvent interactions were carried out using vibration spectroscopy and density functional theory calculation. These interactions correlate to what we experienced with the electrospinning process. In the future, our results could contribute to creating designed structures which main and most important area of usage could be biomedical applications. Furthermore, I started investigating the ambient parameters on the three dimensional formation, which when optimal greatly improves the effect.
This research was supported by NKFIH FK 124147, János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and ÚNKP-20-5-SE-9 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology. The research was further financed by the Higher Education Institutional Excellence Programme of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology in Hungary, within the framework of the Therapeutic Development thematic programme of the Semmelweis University.

University and Doctoral School

Semmelweis University, Doctoral School of Theoretical and Translational Medicine