Mimicking Extracellular Matrix Structure

Electrospun scaffold has often been said to mimic extracellular matrix (ECM) because ECMs are mostly made out of collagen nanofibers. However, from the structural perspective, the arrangement of the nanofibers that forms the ECM for the tissues and organs may be different. A randomly distributed nanofibers cannot be said to mimic all ECM. To better stimulate appropriate cell response and mechanical property of the tissue and organ, it is preferable that the man-made nanofibrous scaffold replicates the arrangement of the respective native ECM. Table 1 shows the natural ECM and the corresponding electrospun nanofibrous structure that resembles it.

Table 1. Natural ECM and the corresponding electrospinning derived structure.

Aortic Valve
Wavy collagen fibrils of decellularized aortic valve [Ye et al 2013]	Electrospun nanofibrous structure.
Bone
Mineralized bone ECM	Mineralized electrospun structure structure
Fibrin Clot
Fibrin clots consisting of nanofibers [Neergaard-Petersen et al 2013]	Electrospun randomly distributed fibers resembling fibrin clots
Small Intestine
Decellularized small intestine ECM [Oliveira et al 2013], scale bar represents 50 um.	Electrospun structure resembling small intestine ECM
Stromal Lamella
Part of ECM stromal lamella ECM [Dai et al 2012], scale bar represents 7 um.	Electrospun structure resembling part of stromal lamella
Part of ECM stromal lamella ECM [Dai et al 2012], scale bar represents 10 um.	Electrospun structure resembling part of stromal lamella [Teo et al 2008]
Tendon
Decellularized tendon ECM [Youngstrom et al 2013]	Electrospun structure resembling tendon ECM