Fabrication of 3D chitosan/polyvinyl alcohol/brushite nanofibrous scaffold for bone tissue engineering by electrospinning using a novel falling film collector.

Despite its advantages, electrospinning has limited effectiveness in 3D scaffolding due to the high density of fibers it produces. In this research, a novel electrospinning collector was developed to overcome this constraint. An aqueous suspension containing chitosan/polyvinyl alcohol nanofibers was prepared employing a unique falling film collector. Suspension molding by freeze-drying resulted in a 3D nanofibrous scaffold (3D-NF). The mineralized scaffold was obtained by brushite deposition on 3D-NF using wet chemical mineralization by new sodium tripolyphosphate and calcium chloride dihydrate precursors. The 3D-NF was optimized and compared with the conventional electrospun 2D nanofibrous scaffold (2D-NF) and the 3D freeze-dried scaffold (3D-FD). Both minor fibrous and major freeze-dried pore shapes were present in 3D-NFs with sizes of 16.11-24.32 µm and 97.64-234.41 µm, respectively. The scaffolds' porosity increased by 53 % to 73 % compared to 2D-NFs. Besides thermal stability, mineralization improved the 3D-NF's ultimate strength and elastic modulus by 2.2 and 4.7 times, respectively. In vitro cell studies using rat bone marrow mesenchymal cells confirmed cell infiltration up to 290 µm and scaffold biocompatibility. The 3D-NFs given nanofibers and brushite inclusion exhibited considerable osteoinductivity. Therefore, falling film collectors can potentially be applied to prepare 3D-NFs from electrospinning without post-processing.

Determination of human absorbed dose of 201Tl(III)-DTPA-HIgG based on biodistribution data in rats.

To estimate the absorbed dose in normal organs and inflamed tissue following i.v. administration of [201Tl](III)-DTPA-HIgG by using biodistribution data in inflamation bearing rats was attempted. The percentages of injected dose per gram of each organ were calculated. The medical internal radiation dose formulation was applied to calculate the absorbed dose for various organs. The inflamed tissue to blood activity concentration ratios were about 19 and 23.3 at 24 and 28 h post-injection, respectively. A 185-MBq injection of 201Tl-DTPA-HIgG into the human body, might result in an estimated absorbed dose of 14.4 mGy for the total body and the highest absorbed dose was in the kidney with 1195 (mGy) and second to the Spleen were the liver, the lungs and the adrenals, which received 250.5 (mGy), 58.64 (mGy) and 56.44 (mGy), respectively. Biodistribution of [201Tl](III)-DTPA-HIgG demonstrated significant inflamed tissue uptake and low muscle and blood uptake, allowing for imaging of inflamed tissues.