Abstract
Fibrin, the prominent extracellular matrix in early wound tissue, is discussed to influence immune cells and healing. The nature of fibrinogen/fibrin to form fibrillary networks is frequently exploited to engineer microenvironments for cellular analysis. This study focuses on revealing the correlation of fibril formation kinetic and the resulting network microstructure of engineered 3D fibrin networks. Different concentrations of fibrinogen (1-3 mg mL(-1) ), thrombin (0.01-0.15 U mL(-1) ), sodium chloride (40-120 mm), and calcium chloride (1-10 mm) are applied to assess the impact on the fibril growth kinetics by turbidity analysis and on the resulting fibril and pore diameter by laser scanning microscopy. The results highlight a direct influence of the sodium chloride concentration on fibrillation kinetics and reveal a strong correlation between fibrillation kinetics and network microstructure. With the assumption of a first-order growth kinetic, an increase of the growth constant k (0.015-0.04 min(-1) ) is found to correlate to a decrease in fibril diameter (1-0.65 µm) and pore diameter (11-5 µm). The new findings enable an easy prediction of 3D fibrin network microstructure by the fibril formation kinetic and contribute to an improved engineering of defined scaffolds for tissue engineering and cell culture applications.