Aminolysis of polycaprolactone nanofibers for applications in uterine tissue engineering

One in every five hundred women in their fertile years are affected by Absolute Uterine Factor Infertility (AUFI) whose treatment is usually organ transplantation. But the success rate of complete recovery after this procedure is very minimal and there is also shortage in donor organs and long-term immunosuppression. Therefore, the concepts of tissue engineering in uterus have emerged as a potential solution. Uterine tissue is highly elastic in nature and is made up of several sheets of membranes and elastic fibrils. Therefore, the objective of this study was to create a nanofibrous scaffold by electrospinning method similar to native ECM using polycaprolactone (PCL) as a biomaterial. PCL nanofibers, being highly hydrophobic, were surface modified by aminolysis, where primarily amine groups were introduced. The modified nanofibers were characterized by contact angle analysis; Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and ninhydrin assay. For assessing their cytocompatibility, primary human uterine fibroblasts were cultured and analysed for their adhesion, morphology, proliferation, and viability in comparison to unmodified PCL fibers and tissue culture polystyrene (TCPS). Our results showed that immobilization of NH₂ groups on the PCL nanofibers significantly improved their capacity for uterine cell attachment and proliferation. The modified PCL fibers also provided the biochemical signals for the uterine cells to acquire a morphology indicating that they could be potentially used as a promising scaffold for uterine tissue engineering applications.