A collagen-based corneal stroma substitute with micro-designed architecture.

A 3D corneal stroma substitute with micro-level patterns was constructed from a stack of 4 micro patterned collagen or collagen-elastin like recombinamer (Col:ELR) blend layers. The transparency of all of the films was quite high with the uncrosslinked (UXL) films and dehydrothermally treated (150 °C, 24 h) Col:ELR films yielding the best results. Human corneal keratocytes (HK) could be attached and proliferated equally well on the single films of Col and Col:ELR.