“…Thus, they can be categorized as natural, synthetic, or hybrid biomaterials (see Table 1 for examples of biomaterials and applications). In most cases, naturally derived biomaterials are amino acid-based or sugar-based biopolymers which can be components of the natural ECM (e.g., collagen, laminin, elastin, and fibrinogen) or not (e.g., chitin, silk fibroin, chitosan, and alginate; Silva et al, 2017 ; Ahadian et al, 2018 ). Such materials represent an attractive source for in vitro TE applications, due to their microstructure, stability, biocompatibility, and ability to present cells with natural adhesion sites, as well as due to the possibility to tailor and control their properties via physical or chemical treatments (i.e., cross-linking) or by blending them with other biopolymers (Guarino et al, 2016 ; Ullah and Chen, 2020 ) to better recapitulate in vitro the physiological milieu.…”