An original design of a simple bioreactor was used to fabricate two tubular, 200 cm long BC structures by culturing Komagataeibacter sucrofermentans B-11267 on a molasses medium. In addition, a tubular BC-based biocomposite with improved mechanical properties was obtained by combining cultivation on the molasses medium with in situ chemical modification by polyvinyl alcohol (PVA). Moreover, the present study investigated the BC production by the K. sucrofermentans B-11267 strain on the media with different molasses concentrations under agitated culture conditions. The dynamics of sugar consumption during the cultivation were studied by HPLC. The structure and physicochemical properties of BC and tubular BC structures were characterized by FTIR spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Thus, the findings indicate that K. sucrofermentans B-11267, when cultivated in a molasses medium, which is such a cheap waste product in the sugar industry, forms a significant amount of BC with a high crystallinity degree. The BC tubular structures demonstrated great potential for their application in biomedicine as artificial blood vessels and conduits for nerve regeneration.

The article is devoted to the study of the structure, physico-mechanical properties and biocompatibility of modified conduits based on bacterial cellulose (BC) to replace injured blood vessels. It has been shown that both samples have almost the same elastic recoil and are superior to synthetic vascular grafts in terms of the parameters studied. It should be noted that the first modified sample is characterized by greater elasticity and lower tensile strength compared to the second sample; however, the physico-mechanical properties of the obtained conduits are in the range corresponding to native blood vessels. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) demonstrated that the conduits under study had a fibrillar structure with nanosized pores that enabled the adhesion of endothelial cells on the internal surface of the vascular implant, improved elasticity under transverse pressure, and raised the elasticity modulus when stretching along the fibrils. Thermogravimetry revealed that elastic recoil formation depended on the nature of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) interaction with the nanofibrillar structure of BC rather than on the content of polyvinyl alcohol used for modification. The MTT test results confirmed no cytotoxicity and high oxygen permeability in the studied samples, opening great opportunities for their application in regenerative biomedicine to replace injured blood vessels.