Biomaterials for In Situ Tissue Regeneration: A Review

Abstract

This review focuses on a somewhat unexplored strand of regenerative medicine, that is in situ tissue engineering. In this approach manufactured scaffolds are implanted in the injured region for regeneration within the patient. The scaffold is designed to attract cells to the required volume of regeneration to subsequently proliferate, differentiate, and as a consequence develop tissue within the scaffold which in time will degrade leaving just the regenerated tissue. This review highlights the wealth of information available from studies of ex-situ tissue engineering about the selection of materials for scaffolds. It is clear that there are great opportunities for the use of additive manufacturing to prepare complex personalized scaffolds and we speculate that by building on this knowledge and technology, the development of in situ tissue engineering could rapidly increase. Ex-situ tissue engineering is handicapped by the need to develop the tissue in a bioreactor where the conditions, however optimized, may not be optimum for accelerated growth and maintenance of the cell function. We identify that in both methodologies the prospect of tissue regeneration has created much promise but delivered little outside the scope of laboratory-based experiments. We propose that the design of the scaffolds and the materials selected remain at the heart of developments in this field and there is a clear need for predictive modelling which can be used in the design and optimization of materials and scaffolds.

Proteins and Peptides as Important Modifiers of the Polymer Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering Applications—A Review

“…Nevertheless, the specified features of biomaterials (e.g., pore size or mechanical strength) are closely associated with their future applications. For instance, biomaterials for skin TE may possess lower mechanical strength compared to scaffolds dedicated for bone TE [9][10][11]13,17,18,31,33,196,[199][200][201].…”

Surface Design of Antifouling Vascular Constructs Bearing Biofunctional Peptides for Tissue Regeneration Applications

“…For this reason, the development of vascular tissue engineering strategies has gained attention, harnessing the cells/humans' own regeneration capacity. In particular, in situ regeneration strategies are based on inducing the adhesion and proliferation of endothelial cells to generate a lining of healthy non-thrombogenic endothelium on the synthetic vessel graft surface (i.e., endothelialization) [14,15].…”

Hepatic Differentiation of Stem Cells in 2D and 3D Biomaterial Systems

“…The advantages of synthetic biomaterials include tunable and reproducible properties, such as stiffness, degradation rate, swelling rate. Synthetic biomaterials such as poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) are often used to fabricate 3D scaffolds [ 77 ]. In order to present biochemical cues close to those in the in vivo environment, composite biomaterials consisting of both synthetic and natural polymers with physical or chemical interactions have been developed.…”