Fabrication of highly interconnected porous silk fibroin scaffolds for potential use as vascular grafts

In this study, an easy-to-adopt and mild approach based on modified freeze-drying method was developed to fabricate a silk fibroin (SF) scaffold with high porosity, proper pore size and highly interconnected pores. The preparation conditions were optimized by pre-selecting the freezing temperature, SF concentrations, the choice of various alcohols as solvent and its working concentrations. Heparin was also successful incorporated into SF scaffold. The heparin-loaded SF scaffolds exhibited excellent anticoagulant property, cell infiltration and in vivo capillary formation, implicating a promising potential use as vascular grafts.