Osteoblast, fibroblast and in-vivo biological response to poly(vinylidene fluoride) based composite materials

Electroactive materials can be taken to advantage for the development of sensors and actuators as well as for novel tissue engineering strategies. Composites based on poly(vinylidene fluoride), PVDF, have been evaluated with respect to their biological response. Cell viability and proliferation were performed in vitro both with Mesenchymal Stem Cells differentiated to osteoblasts and Human Fibroblast Foreskin 1. In-vivo tests were also performed using six week-old C57Bl/6 mice. It was concluded that zeolite and clay composites are biocompatible materials promoting cell response and not showing in vivo pro-inflammatory effects, which renders both of them attractive for biological applications and tissue engineering, opening interesting perspectives to development of scaffolds from these composites. Ferrite and silver composites decrease osteoblast cell viability and carbon nanotubes decreased fibroblast viability. Further, carbon nanotube composites resulted in a significant increase in local vascularization accompanied an increase of inflammatory markers after implantation.This work is funded by FEDER funds through the "Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade – COMPETE" and by national funds by FCT- Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, project references NANO/NMed-SD/0156/2007. C. R. thanks the INL for a PhD grant. V.S. thanks the FCT for the SFRH/BPD/63148/2009 grants. The authors also thank the support of the COST Action MP1003, 2010 ‘European Scientific Network for Artificial Muscles’ (ESNAM)