Tissue engineering scaffolds requirements

These polymers are of increasing utility and are good examples of the cellular requirement for water in tissue engineering scaffolds. Polypho-sphazenes are degradable polymers that have been functionalized with a variety of biomolecules such as peptides and growth factors. ... 

Migration and infiltration of cells into tissue engineering scaffolds are crucial factors for their success. Many types of scaffold design require that cells seeded in vitro or recruited in vivo are allowed to infiltrate and populate the scaffolds quickly. Microstructure has a significant effect on cell migration and infiltration, and understanding these effects may lead to better scaffold design. 

A similar approach to mimic capillary network and overcome diffusion limitations within large-tissue construct has been proposed by Narashima [23]. Hollow fiber membrane integrated within tissue-engineered scaffolds is supposed to supply required nutrients and gas through the walls of the fibers during in vitro perfusion bioreactor culture and then, being connected to the vasculature of the host, become a functional perfused network of the implant. 

Natural polymers such as collagen, elastin, and fibrin make up much of the body s native extracellular matrix (ECM), and they were explored as platforms for tissue engineered constructs [34,47 9]. Polysaccharides such as chitosan, starch, alginate, and dextran were also studied for these purposes. Simultaneously, silk fibroin was widely explored for vascular applications due to its higher mechanical properties in comparison to other natural polymers, such as fibrin [48]. The utilization of natural polymers to create tissue-engineered scaffolds has yielded promising results, both in vitro and in vivo, due in part to the enhanced bioactivity provided by materials normally found within the human body [50]. However, their mechanical response is usually below the required values therefore, synthetic polymers have been explored to achieve the desired properties. 

This chapter provides an overview of biodegradable tissue-engineered scaffolds that are here grouped according to the fabrication technique required for their... 

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