Abstract
Natural polymers have been widely used for biomedical applications in recent decades. They offer the advantages of resembling the extracellular matrix of native tissues and retaining biochemical cues and properties necessary to enhance their biocompatibility, so they usually improve the cellular attachment and behavior and avoid immunological reactions. Moreover, they offer a rapid degradability through natural enzymatic or chemical processes. However, natural polymers present poor mechanical strength, which frequently makes the manipulation processes difficult. Recent advances in biofabrication, 3D printing, microfluidics, and cell-electrospinning allow the manufacturing of complex natural polymer matrixes with biophysical and structural properties similar to those of the extracellular matrix. In addition, these techniques offer the possibility of incorporating different cell lines into the fabrication process, a revolutionary strategy broadly explored in recent years to produce cell-laden scaffolds that can better mimic the properties of functional tissues. In this review, the use of 3D printing, microfluidics, and electrospinning approaches has been extensively investigated for the biofabrication of naturally derived polymer scaffolds with encapsulated cells intended for biomedical applications (e.g., cell therapies, bone and dental grafts, cardiovascular or musculoskeletal tissue regeneration, and wound healing).
Highlights
Polymeric biomaterials have been developed to provide an artificial matrix that can mimic the cell microenvironment
This review focuses on the biofabrication techniques of microfluidics, electrospinning, and 3D printing using natural polymers
The system consists of two nozzles; one of them prints PCL by high-temperature melt deposition, forming the principal construct that provided the physical properties, and the second nozzle uses a mix of GelMa, extracellular matrix (ECM), and chondrocytes, and it is deposited in the free space between PCLs
Summary
Polymeric biomaterials have been developed to provide an artificial matrix that can mimic the cell microenvironment. Natural polymers extracted from biological systems such as plants, microorganisms, algae, or animals have been used for decades in the biomedical field These materials retain the biochemical cues and properties necessary to improve their biocompatibility and present similar structures to the extracellular matrix (ECM) of native tissues [2,3,4,5]. Recent advances in biofabrication techniques allow the production of a polymer matrix with biophysical and structural properties similar to the ECM, and its combination with different cell lines is capable of proliferating and differentiating into the desired tissue. Some advanced techniques (i.e., microfluidics [33,34], electrospinning [10,35], and 3D printing [36,37]) allow the integration of cells directly into the polymer matrix with the adequate physical and biological properties to imitate the ECM of the desired tissue. These techniques have been recently explored to create polymer matrixes with embedded cells for biomedical applications, and they are in continuous evolution, as we are going to illustrate in the present review
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