Chitin Scaffolds in Tissue Engineering

Abstract

Tissue engineering/regeneration is based on the hypothesis that healthy stem/progenitor cells either recruited or delivered to an injured site, can eventually regenerate lost or damaged tissue. Most of the researchers working in tissue engineering and regenerative technology attempt to create tissue replacements by culturing cells onto synthetic porous three-dimensional polymeric scaffolds, which is currently regarded as an ideal approach to enhance functional tissue regeneration by creating and maintaining channels that facilitate progenitor cell migration, proliferation and differentiation. The requirements that must be satisfied by such scaffolds include providing a space with the proper size, shape and porosity for tissue development and permitting cells from the surrounding tissue to migrate into the matrix. Recently, chitin scaffolds have been widely used in tissue engineering due to their non-toxic, biodegradable and biocompatible nature. The advantage of chitin as a tissue engineering biomaterial lies in that it can be easily processed into gel and scaffold forms for a variety of biomedical applications. Moreover, chitin has been shown to enhance some biological activities such as immunological, antibacterial, drug delivery and have been shown to promote better healing at a faster rate and exhibit greater compatibility with humans. This review provides an overview of the current status of tissue engineering/regenerative medicine research using chitin scaffolds for bone, cartilage and wound healing applications. We also outline the key challenges in this field and the most likely directions for future development and we hope that this review will be helpful to the researchers working in the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

A review of bioactive plant polysaccharides: Biological activities, functionalization, and biomedical applications

“…Blends or composites of chitin or chitosan with synthetic or natural polymers, such as polyethylene glycol, polylactic acid, polypyrrole, collagen, starch, and with inoraganic materials such as bioactive glass and ceramics, for drug delivery systems, tissue-engineering, and other medical applications have recently been intensively studied (Jayakumar et al, 2011;Kumar, Muzzarelli, Muzzarelli, Sashiwa, & Domb, 2004;Nakamatsu, Torres, Troncoso, Min-Lin, & Boccaccini, 2006;Rinaudo, 2008). Furthermore, similar to alginate as listed in Table 2, layer-by-layer or multilayer coating techniques have been developed to prepare chitosan-based polyelectrolyte complexes with 2D and 3D structures such as freestanding films, capsules, and porous scaffolds.…”

Poriferan Chitin as a Versatile Template for Extreme Biomimetics

“…A number of reviews have been published regarding chitin chemistry [69], solubility [70,71] and chitin applications in biotechnology [72], waste water treatment [73][74][75], enzyme immobilization [76] and in biomedicine [72,77,78]. We, therefore, decided to focus this review on the specific properties of chitin that render it suitable for use in the more modern field of biomimetics, with a particular emphasis on extreme biomimetics.…”

A physico-chemical and biological study of novel chitosan–chloroquinoline derivative for biomedical applications

“…Chitosan is biocompatible, biodegradable, low toxicity, remarkable affinity to proteins, which helps attract increasing attention in the fields of textile, food, agriculture, cosmetics, biomedical, pharmaceutical, and other industries [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Recently, chitosan has been reported to be used as a material for drug delivery [10,11] optical [12], and tissue engineering applications [7,13,14].…”