Tailoring chitosan/collagen scaffolds for tissue engineering: Effect of composition and different crosslinking agents on scaffold properties

•In this study, various chitosan/collagen scaffolds have been developed and characterised in terms of some of the most important physic-chemical properties to be used with tissue engineering applications.•According to changes in composition and crosslinking methodology, a wide range of scaffolds with different stability, degradation and swelling properties were obtained.•These scaffolds should offer great versatility for selecting the most suitable structure for specific applications in the future.•However, the most significant results relate to the 20Chit/80Col composition, whose self-crosslinking phenomenon eliminates the need for using additional chemical reactants, so making the product much more biocompatible.•Furthermore, the use of crosslinking reagents, especially TPP or EDAC+TPP, seems to be essential in stabilizing the scaffolds where the chitosan proportion increased.•Generally, all scaffolds seeded with MCF-7 allow a gradual increase in the number of cells in 3D structures for up to 5 days.•These results showed the possible application of the developed scaffolds in TE, offering the possibility of tailoring their properties according to their final biological use and the requirements of the tissue under consideration. Chitosan/collagen (Chit/Col) blends have demonstrated great potential for use in tissue engineering (TE) applications. However, there exists a lack of detailed study on the influence of important design parameters (i.e, component ratio or crosslinking methods) on the essential properties of the scaffolds (morphology, mechanical stiffness, swelling, degradation and cytotoxicity). This work entailed a systematic study of these essential properties of three Chit/Col compositions, covering a wide range of component ratios and using different crosslinking methods. Our results showed the possibility of tailoring these properties by changing component ratios, since different interactions occurred between Chit/Col: samples with Chit-enriched compositions showed a hydrogen-bonding type complex (HC), whereas a self-crosslinking phenomenon was induced in Col-enriched scaffolds. Additionally, material and biological properties of the resultant matrices were further adjusted and tuned by changing crosslinking conditions. In such way, we obtained a wide range of scaffolds whose properties were tailored to meet specific needs of TE applications.