Silk fibroin H-fibroin/poly(ε-caprolactone) core-shell nanofibers with enhanced mechanical property and long-term drug release

The scaffold materials with good mechanical and structural properties, controlled drug release performance, biocompatibility and biodegradability are important tenet in tissue engineering. In this work, the functional core–shell nanofibers with poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) as shell and silk fibroin heavy chain (H-fibroin) as core were constructed by emulsion electrospinning. The transmission electron microscopy confirmed that the nanofiber with core–shell structure were successfully prepared. The constructed nanofiber materials were characterized by the several characterization methods. The results showed that ethanol treatment could induce the formation of β-sheet of H-fibroin in composite nanofibers, thus improving the mechanical properties of PCL/H-fibroin nanofiber scaffold. In addition, we evaluated the potential of PCL/H-fibroin nanofiber membrane as a biological scaffold. It was found that PCL/H-fibroin nanofiber scaffold was more conducive to cell adhesion and proliferation with the increment of H-fibroin. Finally, in vitro drug release presented that PCL/H-fibroin core–shell nanofibers could effectively reduce the prophase burst of drug molecules and show the sustained drug release. The PCL/H-fibroin nanofiber scaffolds constructed in this work have good mechanical properties, biocompatibility, and display good potential in biomedical applications, such as drug carriers, tissue engineering and wound dressings, etc.