title: A collagen-based corneal stroma substitute with micro-designed architecture.
abstract: A 3D corneal stroma substitute with micro-level patterns was constructed from a stack of 4 micro patterned collagen or collagen-elastin like recombinamer (Col:ELR) blend layers. The transparency of all of the films was quite high with the uncrosslinked (UXL) films and dehydrothermally treated (150 °C, 24 h) Col:ELR films yielding the best results. Human corneal keratocytes (HK) could be attached and proliferated equally well on the single films of Col and Col:ELR. However, for the multilayer constructs the proliferation was higher on Col than on Col:ELR. The cells were found to align along the patterns (microchannels with a 39 μm groove depth, 8 μm groove width, 3.3 μm ridge width, and 54.7° inclination angle) of the films, while no significant alignment was observed on the unpatterned films. The transparency of the seeded Col:ELR films was superior to the Col films over a 30 day incubation period and was quite close to that of a native human cornea. It was concluded that the Col and Col:ELR films and their 3D constructs have significant potential for use as corneal stroma substitutes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, METU, Ankara, Turkey and Department of Biotechnology, METU, Ankara, Turkey and BIOMATEN, Center of Excellence in Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering, METU, Ankara, Turkey.
authors.forename: Cemile
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kilic
authors.affiliation: GIR Bioforge, University of Valladolid, CIBER-BBN, Valladolid, Spain.
authors.forename: Alessandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Girotti
authors.affiliation: GIR Bioforge, University of Valladolid, CIBER-BBN, Valladolid, Spain.
authors.forename: J Carlos
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Rodriguez-Cabello
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, METU, Ankara, Turkey and Department of Biotechnology, METU, Ankara, Turkey and BIOMATEN, Center of Excellence in Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering, METU, Ankara, Turkey and Department of Biomedical Engineering, METU, Ankara, Turkey. vhasirci@metu.edu.tr.
authors.forename: Vasif
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Hasirci