Abstract
During the last years, scientific research in biotechnology has been reporting a considerable boost forward due to many advances marked in different technological areas. Researchers working in the field of regenerative medicine, mechanobiology and pharmacology have been constantly looking for non-invasive methods able to track tissue development, monitor biological processes and check effectiveness in treatments. The possibility to control cell cultures and quantify their products represents indeed one of the most promising and exciting hurdles. In this perspective, the use of conductive materials able to map cell activity in a three-dimensional environment represents the most interesting approach. The greatest potential of this strategy relies on the possibility to correlate measurable changes in electrical parameters with specific cell cycle events, without affecting their maturation process and considering a physiological-like setting. Up to now, several conductive materials has been identified and validated as possible solutions in scaffold development, but still few works have stressed the possibility to use conductive scaffolds for non-invasive electrical cell monitoring. In this picture, the main objective of this review was to define the state-of-the-art concerning conductive biomaterials to provide researchers with practical guidelines for developing specific applications addressing cell growth and differentiation monitoring. Therefore, a comprehensive review of all the available conductive biomaterials (polymers, carbon-based, and metals) was given in terms of their main electric characteristics and range of applications.
Highlights
Scaffold-based 3D cell cultures are highly investigated for many applications in pharmacology, drug development, diagnostics, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine
The study was a scientific article written in English; the study was focused on the use of conductive biomaterials for cell monitoring; the study reported information about the choice of the used materials, their properties and the manufacturing process
All the papers were first selected according to the title; after that, the abstracts were examined in order to exclude those studies that were irrelevant for this analysis
Summary
Scaffold-based 3D cell cultures are highly investigated for many applications in pharmacology, drug development, diagnostics, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine Their main value relies on the capability to reproduce an environment which mimics the in vivo conditions undergone by cells. Traditional analytical evaluations, considered the reliable “gold standard”, are performed by using dyes, DNA sequencing, immune-based assays, or fluorescence tags, which are often invasive, sample destructive and prevent continuous monitoring. In this picture, one of the most critical hurdle is the possibility to evaluate specific cell functions without affecting their.
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