Fabrication and characterization of single-strand chitosan fibers for chitosan hydrogel scaffolds
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Human voice is produced by self-oscillations of the vocal folds that consist two lips of soft tissue located within the larynx. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), around 7.5 million people in the United States have difficulties for using their voices. Smoking, abuse of alcohol and caffeine, chemical exposure, laryngeal cancer, upper respiratory infection, and voice misuse are among patterns of risks that might lead to voice disorders. One common type of voice loss is vocal fold lamina propria (VFLP) scarring disorder. Injectable hydrogels (a gel composed of one or multiple polymers suspended in water) are proposed to potentially recover the elasticity of scarred VFLP. A biomimetic hydrogel based on glycol-chitosan is presently under investigation in the Biomechanics laboratory in the department of mechanical engineering at McGill University in order to treat VFLP scarring disorder. Cells within the chitosan scaffold tend to adopt a spherical shape, which hampers their mobility and movement. We hypothesized that the presence of fibers within the gel, make it possible for the cells to attach and spread along the fibers and migrate. Therefore, our objective in the study outlined in this thesis was to fabricate and introduce single-strand chitosan fibers into the chitosan hydrogel matrix to promote the migration and mobility of fibroblast cells within the composite gel. In order to fabricate the fiber, a mixture of chitosan and acetic acid was prepared. The fibers were fabricated via direct extrusion. The primary solution was injected into a bath of acetone using a syringe pump. Fibers with an average diameter of 50 µm were obtained through selection of a proper needle size. The viability and migration rate of human vocal fold fibroblasts (hVFF) were investigated to study the reaction of the cells to the presence of the fibers. The ultimate strengths of the fibers were quantified with performing tensile tests. The composition and the surface topography of the fibers were studied using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Swelling tests were performed to quantify the fibers' capacity to incorporate growth factors and drugs. The storage modulus of the composite hydrogels was measured using a torsional rheometer. Overall, the chitosan fibers were successfully fabricated and introduced to the hydrogel and the mechanical and biological properties of the hydrogel scaffold were enhanced significantly. The viability and migration tests confirmed that adding the fibers to the scaffold is a promising method to promote cell migration. The mechanical properties of the composite scaffold were enhanced as expected.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".