Fig. 8

Three-dimensional culture of breast mesenchymal cells for tissue engineering purposes. a Phase contrast microscope image shows the two melt electrospinning writing poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) scaffolds, PCL-1 (one layer of fibers) and PCL-20 (20 layers of fibers) at cell seeding of the normal (NORMA)2 mesenchymal cell (MES) cell line and then consecutively at 6 and 18 days of growth. Note that no growth occurred on PCL-1 throughout the 18-day period. b Confocal microscope image shows NORMA2 MES after 18 days of growth. Image represents an overlay of 43 z-stack sections (each step 1.43 μm) equaling 61.49 μm. Green represents the WGA Alexa 488 fluorescent cellular membrane and the red the DRAQ5 (633 nm)-stained nuclei. Blue arrow indicates the PCL scaffold overlaid with the bright field channel. White arrow indicates an area with ongoing cell growth, which originally initiated along the fibers. Bar = 200 μm