Enhanced collagen production from human dermal fibroblasts on poly(glycerol sebacate)-methacrylate scaffolds

Poly(glycerol sebacate)-methacrylate (PGS-M) is a photocurable form of polyglycerol sebacate (PGS) that has recently been shown to be suitable for use as a scaffold for tissue engineering. It has the benefits of PGS, including biocompatibility and biodegradability, while also being much simpler to process into a variety of 3D structures. Cell compatibility has already been demonstrated on the 30% methacrylated PGS-M scaffolds. However no studies have yet assessed the collagen produced by cells growing on the PGS-M scaffold. Here we demonstrate that 50% methacrylated PGS-M 3D scaffolds are able to support the culture of human dermal fibroblasts for 1 week. We also show that collagen production is enhanced compared with the same cells growing on tissue culture plastic, with the cells producing approximately 50% more total collagen after 1 week in culture. These results go further to demonstrate the suitability of the PGS-M scaffolds for generating ECM based constructs for soft tissue engineering.