Novel approach for the assessment of ovarian follicles infiltration in polymeric electrospun patterned scaffolds.

Reproductive tissue engineering (REPROTEN) has been recently defined as the application of the tissue engineering approach targeting reproductive organs and several research works are focusing on this novel strategy. Being still an innovative field, most of the scaffold characterization techniques s...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Nathalie Raffel, Ralf Dittrich, Tobias Bäuerle, Lisa Seyler, Amir Fattahi, Inge Hoffmann, Aldo Leal-Egaña, Matthias W Beckmann, Aldo R Boccaccini, Liliana Liverani
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2019-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215985
Description
Summary:Reproductive tissue engineering (REPROTEN) has been recently defined as the application of the tissue engineering approach targeting reproductive organs and several research works are focusing on this novel strategy. Being still an innovative field, most of the scaffold characterization techniques suitable for other tissue targets give inappropriate results, and there is the need to evaluate and investigate novel approaches. In particular the focus of this paper is the evaluation of the infiltration of ovarian follicles inside patterned electrospun scaffolds. Beyond the standard techniques, for the first time the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for this purpose is proposed and specific protocols for scaffold preparation are reported. Positive results in terms of evaluation of scaffolds incorporating follicles confirm this technique as highly effective for further applications in this field.
ISSN:1932-6203