Controlling a cellular niche in scaffold designs for epithelial tissue engineering

Abstract

Epithelial tissues have sophisticated spatially and temporally defined biochemical and structural features, which are the prerequisites for functioning tissues. These include extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins and growth factors, both in terms of presence as well as presentation, topographical cues that direct polarity, mechanical properties of the underlying substratum, which regulate the interplay between cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions, and fluidic effects that govern mass transfer as well as applied physical stresses. Focus has been placed on quantitatively defining and controlling the microenvironmental cues to regulate the functional and structural features of epithelial tissue constructs. These requirements present special challenges to the engineering of innovative scaffolds for tissue engineering. Over the past decades, significant inroads have been made into tackling these challenges, and improvements in the field present a trend and a path to more innovative engineering efforts. The ultimate goal is to converge at an approach that drastically improves the performance of such constructs in liver, kidney, intestine, esophagus, and lung tissue engineering applications that facilitate tissue repair. © 2012 Pan Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved.