Three dimensional fibrous scaffolds as tissue repairing templates during post-operative healing

[Display omitted] •Thicker membrane can effectively prevent adhesion between cecum and peritoneal wall in rats.•Thinner membrane induced more serious inflammation, causing more damage to organs.•Cells tended to spread on thinner membrane, while maintained spherical shape on thicker membrane. Electrospun scaffolds, as a kind of biomimetic and biocompatible nanomaterial, evoke much interest in tissue regeneration and organ renovation during past decades. However, it has not been illustrated about the relationship between the structural length scale of 3D scaffolds and their ability to integrating with natural tissues. In this study, using a simple post-operative adhesion model, we evaluated the effects of three kinds of fibrous scaffolds with different thicknesses (50 μm, 120 μm, and 200 μm-thick scaffolds) as an ideal anti-adhesion barrier. Though having the same component, surface porosity and degradation rate, 120 μm and 200 μm-thick scaffolds with smaller mean pore size could prevent adhesion while 50 μm-thick ones couldn’t. The fibrous scaffolds with an insufficient thickness (50 μm) provided a better platform for cell proliferation, which led to its highest adhesion occurrence in all the operation groups, even higher than the negative group without any anti-adhesion membranes. Meanwhile, post-operative intestinal obstruction and inflammation were emphatically discussed after considering the implantation amount, membrane flexibility, and cell toxicity. This study on 3D fibrous scaffolds during post-operative healing might open some new and interesting opportunities for understanding tissue regeneration and organ renovation, and designing multilevel hierarchical structures as implanted templates.