The Use of Natural Polymers in Tissue Engineering: A Focus on Electrospun Extracellular Matrix Analogues

TLDR

Natural polymers such as collagens, elastin, and fibrinogen form the body’s extracellular matrix, providing structural integrity, mechanical support, and signaling for cellular processes and wound healing, and an ideal tissue engineering scaffold should replicate both its structure and functions. This review aims to describe electrospinning and the use of natural polymers for creating bioactive extracellular matrix analogues in tissue engineering. Electrospinning produces non‑woven micro‑ to nanoscale fiber scaffolds from natural polymers, enabling the fabrication of ECM‑like structures. Using natural polymers in electrospun scaffolds has yielded promising in vitro and in vivo results, partly due to the enhanced bioactivity of human‑derived materials.

Abstract

Natural polymers such as collagens, elastin, and fibrinogen make up much of the body’s native extracellular matrix (ECM). This ECM provides structure and mechanical integrity to tissues, as well as communicating with the cellular components it supports to help facilitate and regulate daily cellular processes and wound healing. An ideal tissue engineering scaffold would not only replicate the structure of this ECM, but would also replicate the many functions that the ECM performs. In the past decade, the process of electrospinning has proven effective in creating non-woven ECM analogue scaffolds of micro to nanoscale diameter fibers from an array of synthetic and natural polymers. The ability of this fabrication technique to utilize the aforementioned natural polymers to create tissue engineering scaffolds has yielded promising results, both in vitro and in vivo, due in part to the enhanced bioactivity afforded by materials normally found within the human body. This review will present the process of electrospinning and describe the use of natural polymers in the creation of bioactive ECM analogues in tissue engineering.