Scaffolds for tissue fabrication

TLDR

Tissue engineering, an interdisciplinary field, holds promise for creating living tissue alternatives for transplantation and reconstruction, with scaffold materials and fabrication technologies playing a critical role in forming temporary extracellular matrices that support 3‑D tissue growth. This review outlines the fundamentals of tissue engineering and its link to materials science, highlighting key scaffold design principles. The authors survey common scaffold materials and fabrication methods, and discuss emerging advances in scaffold technology.

Abstract

Tissue engineering is an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary field. It has shown great promise in generating living alternatives for harvested tissues and organs for transplantation and reconstructive surgery. Materials and fabrication technologies are critically important for tissue engineering in designing temporary, artificial extracellular matrices (scaffolds), which support three-dimensional tissue formation. This review briefly introduces the concept of tissue engineering, and illustrates the relationship between tissue engineering and materials science and engineering. Important scaffold design principles are described. The most frequently used materials and fabrication technologies for scaffolds are reviewed. Some exciting new developments in scaffold materials and fabrication technologies are also discussed.