COLLAGEN FIBER ARCHITECTURE OF A CULTURED DERMAL TISSUE

Advances in tissue engineering have led to the development of artifici ally grown dermal tissues for use in burn and ulcer treatments. An exa mple of such an engineered tissue is Dermagraft(TM), which is grown us ing human neonatal fibroblasts on rectangular sheets of biodegradable mesh. Using small angle light scattering (SALS), we quantified the col lagen fiber architecture of Dermagraft with the mesh scaffold contribu tions removed through the use of a structurally based optical model. D ermagraft collagen fibers were found to have a preferred direction nea rly parallel to the long dimension of the kite-shaped mesh opening wit h small spatial variations over the mesh. This study demonstrated the utility of SALS as a rapid and inexpensive technique for the evaluatio n of gross collagen fiber architecture in engineered tissues.