Assessing the Potential of Caprine Collagen Type I in the Development of Medical Devices

We isolated collagen I from caprine, porcine, and bovine skin and tendon tissues and assessed their purity and chemical properties. We fabricated non-cross-linked and cross-linked scaffolds from each collagen I preparation and assessed their physicochemical and biological properties. Purity and chemical analyses did not reveal any notable differences between the groups. Fibril diameter analysis revealed that the non-cross-linked and cross-linked porcine, caprine, and bovine preparations resulted in scaffolds with the thickest, intermediate, and thinnest fibrils. Among the non-cross-linked scaffolds, no significant differences were observed in stress at break between the groups and the caprine scaffolds had significantly lower and higher strain at break and Young's modulus than the bovine and the porcine scaffolds. Cross-linking significantly increased stress at break of all scaffolds, strain at break of the caprine scaffolds, and Young's modulus of the bovine and porcine scaffolds. Biological analysis did not reveal any noteworthy differences between the groups.