Improved bladder smooth muscle cell differentiation of the mesenchymal stem cells when grown on electrospun polyacrylonitrile/polyethylene oxide nanofibrous scaffold.

Reconstruction of the bladder wall plays an important role in improving its function in patients with urinary bladder dysfunction. Tissue engineering has been trying to introduce biocompatible nanofibers as scaffolds for bladder wall matrix substitutes. In this study a composite nanofibrous scaffold was fabricated from polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and polyethylene oxide (PEO) blend by electrospinning method and then its morphological and mechanical characteristics was evaluated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), tensile, and 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assays. Then smooth muscle cell (SMC) differentiation supportive capacity of PAN-PEO nanofibers was investigated by culturing of human adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells (AT-MSCs) on this scaffold and then its differentiation potential in different groups was investigated using SMC-related gene and protein markers. SEM and MTT results demonstrated that PAN-PEO supported AT-MSCs attachment, growth and proliferation, especially at early times after cell seeding. The obtained results from real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction revealed that collagen-I-α1, collagen-III-α1, α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), calponin1, SM22α, caldesmon1, elastin, and myosin heavy chain (MHC) genes were expressed in AT-MSCs cultured on PAN-PEO significantly higher than those stem cells that cultured on the culture plate as a control. In addition α-SMA and MHC proteins were also expressed in AT-MSCs cultured on PAN-PEO significantly higher than control. According to the results PAN-PEO nanofibrous scaffold showed a positive AT-MSCs-seeded PAN-PEO has a great promising potential to use in bladder tissue engineering applications.