The ECM: To Scaffold, or Not to Scaffold, That Is the Question.

Jonard Corpuz Valdoz,Nicholas A Franks,Collin G Cribbs,Benjamin C Johnson,Dallin J Jacobs,Pam M Van Ry,Ethan L Dodson,Cecilia Sanders

doi:10.3390/ijms222312690

Jonard Corpuz Valdoz, Nicholas A Franks + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms222312690

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Abstract

The extracellular matrix (ECM) has pleiotropic effects, ranging from cell adhesion to cell survival. In tissue engineering, the use of ECM and ECM-like scaffolds has separated the field into two distinct areas—scaffold-based and scaffold-free. Scaffold-free techniques are used in creating reproducible cell aggregates which have massive potential for high-throughput, reproducible drug screening and disease modeling. Though, the lack of ECM prevents certain cells from surviving and proliferating. Thus, tissue engineers use scaffolds to mimic the native ECM and produce organotypic models which show more reliability in disease modeling. However, scaffold-based techniques come at a trade-off of reproducibility and throughput. To bridge the tissue engineering dichotomy, we posit that finding novel ways to incorporate the ECM in scaffold-free cultures can synergize these two disparate techniques.

Highlights

There is a great potential for tissue engineering in creating patient-specific drug screening platforms [6,7]
Being nature’s original bioscaffold, a plethora of information can be discovered from understanding the extracellular matrix (ECM)
The most prevalent problem in decellularized materials is the animal-to-animal variability in ECM composition which leaves no clear chemical definition. This variability leads to problems of reproducibility in some tissue engineering experiments

Summary

Introduction

The potential impacts of tissue engineering include tissue and organ replacement, disease modeling, high-throughput drug screening, and personalized medicine. There is a need for better in vitro organ models to recapitulate the human response to disease or novel drugs. Tissue-engineered organ models represent human organ responses with higher fidelity and have the potential to improve the short coming of current models [5]. There is a great potential for tissue engineering in creating patient-specific drug screening platforms [6,7]. These platforms can predict variability in responses to therapies, allowing for personalized treatment of heterogeneous diseases, such as cancer [1]

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