Biomaterials and Porous Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine

Dear Colleagues,

Tissue engineering emerged more than three decades ago. It has attracted great attention because it holds great promise for solving many difficult medical problems that current treatments cannot deal with or cannot achieve satisfactory clinical outcomes for. Worldwide efforts over the past few decades have led to remarkable progresses in regenerating human body tissues such as skin, blood vessels, and bone. However, there are still great challenges in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Recent advances in materials science and engineering, nanoscience and nanotechnology, manufacturing technologies, biological science, clinical sciences, etc., can significantly move the field forward and greatly assist us to tackle the challenges and regenerate complex body tissues/organs such as the gastrointestinal tract, liver, and uterus.

There are different strategies for human body tissue regeneration. Many researchers have successfully used scaffold-, growth factor (GF)-, or cell-based tissue engineering for regenerating human skin, bone, articular cartilage, etc. In scaffold-based tissue engineering, scaffolds provide conducive microenvironments for cells and play vital roles for cell adhesion, proliferation, differentiation, and new tissue formation. Many biocompatible materials, including polymers, metals, ceramics, and composites/hybrids, have been used/developed as tissue engineering materials and have achieved their successes. However, different materials have their advantages and shortcomings. For example, hydrogels have seen their increasing use in the tissue engineering field because of their particular attractiveness, but they are weak materials. Strong and highly resilient hydrogels are now being investigated/developed for targeted applications by research groups in different continents. For the regeneration of a specific body tissue, the material/materials should be carefully selected and evaluated. There are also many scaffold fabrication technologies, including electrospinning and additive manufacturing (i.e., “3D printing”). Electrospinning is attractive because it can produce nanofibrous structures that mimic the extracellular matrix structure. However, there are limitations in electrospinning, so significant improvements for electrospun products are also required. 3D-printing technologies have significantly raised our ability to create complex scaffolds or cell-scaffold constructs for regenerating complex body tissues. Bioprinting has shown great promise in a number of areas, including tissue engineering. However, there many scientific and technological issues that need to be addressed for 3D printing in tissue engineering and for bioprinting. Additionally, stem cells are increasingly used in tissue engineering investigations. Again, there are fundamental and technical questions that need to be answered for their wide use in the field. Designing scaffolds and scaffold simulation (mechanical, fluidic, etc.) are gaining increasing attention with the aim to achieve the best clinical performance for scaffolds. Biomimicking scaffolds are becoming popular for tissue regeneration. Guidelines on scaffold design, which are tissue specific, should therefore be established. Even though there are already numerous investigations on cell‒scaffold interactions, scaffold‒tissue interactions, and biochemical and/or biomechanical cues on cell behaviour and tissue formation, great efforts are still needed to gain further understanding and new insights in these areas. Furthermore, developing multifunctional scaffolds that can also perform other functions (anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, etc.) provides much wider scope for our R&D activities.

This Special Issue provides a forum for sharing new research findings and new insights in different areas mentioned above from people, both experienced workers and newcomers, involved in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. These people include biomaterials scientists and engineers, tissue engineers, biological scientists, clinicians, and industrialists. Submissions presenting new ideas/approaches, new materials, new scaffold designs, new fabrication technologies, novel scaffolds, new testing techniques, and new assessment methods are very welcome. The materials and porous scaffolds that are presented in these submissions are/will be used for regenerating different body tissues/organs, including skin, blood vessels, bone, tendon/ligament, articular cartilage, osteochondral tissue, gastrointestinal tract, liver, uterus, etc. Articles of excellent quality in this Special Issue will be selected as Feature Papers of the Journal of Functional Biomaterials.

Prof. Dr. Min Wang
Dr. Chong Wang
Dr. Qilong Zhao
Guest Editors

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