Bioactive polymer scaffold for fabrication of vascularized engineering tissue

Abstract

Tissue engineering seeks strategies to design polymeric scaffolds that allow high-cell-density cultures with signaling molecules and suitable vascular supply. One major obstacle in tissue engineering is the inability to create thick engineered-tissue constructs. A pre-vascularized tissue scaffold appears to be the most favorable approach to avoid nutrient and oxygen supply limitations as well as to allow waste removal, factors that are often hurdles in developing thick engineered tissues. Vascularization can be achieved using strategies in which cells are cultured in bioactive polymer scaffolds that can mimic extracellular matrix environments. This review addresses recent advances and future challenges in developing and using bioactive polymer scaffolds to promote tissue construct vascularization.

Recapitulating endochondral ossification: a promising route toin vivobone regeneration

“…In particular, the ligand‐binding sites with specific RGD sequences provided by a particular material may affect cellular functions such as adhesion, spreading and differentiation (Sukmana, ). Scaffold architecture is another well‐recognized determinant of cellular functions such as adhesion, migration and matrix deposition and may significantly affect construct vascularization (Tian and George, ; Boccaccini et al ., ; Sukmana, ). Therefore, scaffold architecture may play a key role in the success of tissue‐engineered endochondral constructs by allowing vessel invasion in vivo .…”

Biomaterials for Cardiac Regeneration

“…The scaffolds enable this by (a) protecting delivered cells from a diseased/impaired tissue microenvironment, (b) providing mechanical support, which enables the cells to withstand, for example, the strong contractile forces of the heart and the hemodynamic shear forces of the bloodstream (Kusuma and Gerecht 2010 ), (c) providing appropriate biomechanical transductive cues, evocative of healthy tissue ECM, of signifi cance considering the frequently disrupted ECM microenvironment at the disease tissue site, and (d) serving as platform for recruitment of autologous cell types that can potentially augment or modulate the regenerative or reparative outcomes due to delivered cells. Scaffold-based delivery of cells has been frequently adopted for endothelialization for thromboprotection of small-diameter vascular graft materials and tissue engineered blood vessels and to stimulate angiogenesis at myocardial and vessel ischemia sites (de Mel et al 2008 ;Shimizu et al 2009 ;Muscari et al 2013 ;Kang et al 2013 ;Sukmana 2012 ). In one of the earliest studies, sequential seeding of bovine SMCs, fi broblasts and ECs in a collagen gel integrated with a Dacron mesh led to the generation of a vascular construct which exhibited a functional endothelium and supported physiological burst pressures (Weinberg and Bell 1986 ).…”

Strategies Affording Prevascularized Cell-Based Constructs for Myocardial Tissue Engineering

“…Bioactive scaffolds employed as a support for engineered tissue endothelialization are fabricated with synthetic or natural polymers and possess several properties useful for facilitating neovascularization [46]. Favorable materials might be also biofunctionalized in order to accelerate in situ endothelialization and provide a specific microenvironment mimicking the natural properties of the native tissue [47].…”