Record Detail

This paper reports the fabrication of electrospun
polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membranes/scaffolds that are
suitable for three-dimensional (3D) cell culture. Through mod-
ification the ratio between PDMS and polymethylmethacrylate
(PMMA) as carrier polymer, we report the possibility of in-
creasing PDMS weight ratio of up to 6 for electrospinning.
Increasing the PDMS content increases the fiber diameter,
the pore size, and the hydrophobicity. To our best knowledge,
this is the first report describing beads-free, durable and
portable electrospun membrane with maximum content of
PDMS suitable for cell culture applications. To show the
proof-of-concept, we successfully cultured epithelial lung can-
cer cells on these membranes in a static well plate without
surface modification. Surprisingly, due to three-dimensional
(3D) and hydrophobic nature of the electrospun fibers, cells
aggregated into 3D multicellular spheroids. These easily de-
tachable and cost-effective scaffolds with controllable thick-
nesses and high tensile strength are good candidates for cell-
stretching devices, organ-on-a-chip devices, tissue engineering
and studies of non-adherent mammalian cancer stem cells.