Abstract
The increasing demand for organ replacements in a growing world with an aging population as well as the loss of tissues and organs due to congenital defects, trauma and diseases has resulted in rapidly evolving new approaches for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine (TERM). The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a crucial component in tissues and organs that surrounds and acts as a physical environment for cells. Thus, ECM has become a model guide for the design and fabrication of scaffolds and biomaterials in TERM. However, the fabrication of a tissue/organ replacement or its regeneration is a very complex process and often requires the combination of several strategies such as the development of scaffolds with multiple functionalities and the simultaneous delivery of growth factors, biochemical signals, cells, genes, immunomodulatory agents, and external stimuli. Although the development of multifunctional scaffolds and biomaterials is one of the most studied approaches for TERM, all these strategies can be combined among them to develop novel synergistic approaches for tissue regeneration. In this review we discuss recent advances in which multifunctional scaffolds alone or combined with other strategies have been employed for TERM purposes.
Highlights
Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine (TERM) is a rapidly evolving field that applies the principles of engineering and life sciences dealing with the regeneration or replacement of damaged or diseased tissues and organs [1]
Surfaces with varying zeta-potentials were obtained using self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) and mouse embryonic fibroblast adhesion was better on the most positive ones [56]. This could be related to the net negative charge of cell membrane and of most of the cell adhesion mediating extracellular matrix (ECM) species that would preferentially absorb on positively charged interfaces [47]
Gene activated biomaterial consisting of a collagen-chondroitin sulfate scaffold loaded with polyethyleneimine carrying a plasmid encoding for stromal derived factor-1 alpha can enhance proangiogenic response, which is needed during wound healing process [114]
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Given the importance of the ECM, it is used as model guide for the design and elaboration of scaffolds and biomaterials, which often try to emulate the ECM natural properties and stimuli responsiveness [7] These properties and cues can be physicochemical, i.e., stiffness, topography, charge density, wettability; or biochemical, i.e., presence of growth factors, hormones, ions. Gene therapy is often utilized to introduce genes into living cells for editing, replacing, or repairing the expression of specific proteins in damaged tissues or organs [15], or to condition cells for further use in cellular therapy External stimulation strategies such as electrical [16], magnetic [17] and photo/optical [18,19] can be applied to modulate cell behavior, induce tissue regeneration and remotely control drug delivery or therapeutic actions.
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