Fig 1.
Electrospinning technique.
Table 1.
Electrospinning parameters for fibre diameter study.
Table 2.
Primer sequences used for fibre diameter RT-PCR.
Table 3.
Primer sequences used for ECM and hypoxia RT-PCR.
Fig 2.
A) Representative SEM images of the four scaffolds at two different magnifications. Fibre diameters listed below. Mean ± SD. B) Fibre orientation of all four scaffolds, showing high degree of randomness. C) Correlation between fibre diameter and pore width for all four scaffolds. R2 value of 0.9997 suggests an extremely high correlation. D) Representative stress strain curves for all four scaffolds. E) Cell viability for all four scaffold morphologies, RFU = relative fluorescence units, Mean ± SD, n = 4.
Table 4.
Mechanical and physical properties of all four scaffolds.
Fig 3.
Representative SEM images of HUVECs binding onto the four scaffold morphologies.
Fig 4.
Representative Z-stack images of DAPI and phalloidin stained HUVECs on all four scaffolds after 12 days of culture.
Images show the depth at which cells can be seen.
Fig 5.
Gene expression of CD31, VEGF, TIMP2, MMP1 and MMP2 on HUVEC seeded scaffolds for all four scaffolds at 6 days and 12 days relative to 70% confluent HUVECs on tissue culture plastic.
Mean ± SD, n >3.
Fig 6.
A) Representative SEM images of HUVECs cultured on PCL and ECM scaffolds under both normoxic and hypoxic culture conditions after 48h. B) Cell viability and C) DNA content of HUVECs, n = 4. D) Gene expression of three key genes. Mean ± SD, n = 5.
Fig 7.
Representative DAPI (blue) and phalloidin (green) stained HUVECs on ECM and PCL electrospun scaffolds cultured in hypoxic and normoxic conditions.