TY - JOUR
T1 - A Minireview of Microfluidic Scaffold Materials in Tissue Engineering
AU - Tong, Anh
AU - Voronov, Roman
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Gustavus and Louise Pfeiffer Research Foundation’s Major Investment Grant, New Jersey Health Foundation Research Award—Grant #PC 22-19, The National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps™)—Grant #1953890, The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS)—Grant #UL1TR003017.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Gustavus and Louise Pfeiffer Research Foundation’s Major Investment Grant, New Jersey Health Foundation Research Award—Grant #PC 22-19, The Grant#1953890,The NationalCenterforAdvancingNationalScienceFoundation’sInnovationCorps(I-Corps™)—
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2022 Tong and Voronov.
PY - 2022/1/11
Y1 - 2022/1/11
N2 - In 2020, nearly 107,000 people in the U.S needed a lifesaving organ transplant, but due to a limited number of donors, only ∼35% of them have actually received it. Thus, successful bio-manufacturing of artificial tissues and organs is central to satisfying the ever-growing demand for transplants. However, despite decades of tremendous investments in regenerative medicine research and development conventional scaffold technologies have failed to yield viable tissues and organs. Luckily, microfluidic scaffolds hold the promise of overcoming the major challenges associated with generating complex 3D cultures: 1) cell death due to poor metabolite distribution/clearing of waste in thick cultures; 2) sacrificial analysis due to inability to sample the culture non-invasively; 3) product variability due to lack of control over the cell action post-seeding, and 4) adoption barriers associated with having to learn a different culturing protocol for each new product. Namely, their active pore networks provide the ability to perform automated fluid and cell manipulations (e.g., seeding, feeding, probing, clearing waste, delivering drugs, etc.) at targeted locations in-situ. However, challenges remain in developing a biomaterial that would have the appropriate characteristics for such scaffolds. Specifically, it should ideally be: 1) biocompatible—to support cell attachment and growth, 2) biodegradable—to give way to newly formed tissue, 3) flexible—to create microfluidic valves, 4) photo-crosslinkable—to manufacture using light-based 3D printing and 5) transparent—for optical microscopy validation. To that end, this minireview summarizes the latest progress of the biomaterial design, and of the corresponding fabrication method development, for making the microfluidic scaffolds.
AB - In 2020, nearly 107,000 people in the U.S needed a lifesaving organ transplant, but due to a limited number of donors, only ∼35% of them have actually received it. Thus, successful bio-manufacturing of artificial tissues and organs is central to satisfying the ever-growing demand for transplants. However, despite decades of tremendous investments in regenerative medicine research and development conventional scaffold technologies have failed to yield viable tissues and organs. Luckily, microfluidic scaffolds hold the promise of overcoming the major challenges associated with generating complex 3D cultures: 1) cell death due to poor metabolite distribution/clearing of waste in thick cultures; 2) sacrificial analysis due to inability to sample the culture non-invasively; 3) product variability due to lack of control over the cell action post-seeding, and 4) adoption barriers associated with having to learn a different culturing protocol for each new product. Namely, their active pore networks provide the ability to perform automated fluid and cell manipulations (e.g., seeding, feeding, probing, clearing waste, delivering drugs, etc.) at targeted locations in-situ. However, challenges remain in developing a biomaterial that would have the appropriate characteristics for such scaffolds. Specifically, it should ideally be: 1) biocompatible—to support cell attachment and growth, 2) biodegradable—to give way to newly formed tissue, 3) flexible—to create microfluidic valves, 4) photo-crosslinkable—to manufacture using light-based 3D printing and 5) transparent—for optical microscopy validation. To that end, this minireview summarizes the latest progress of the biomaterial design, and of the corresponding fabrication method development, for making the microfluidic scaffolds.
KW - 3D printing
KW - biomanufacturing
KW - biomaterial
KW - microfluidic scaffold
KW - regenerative medicine
KW - tissue engineering
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U2 - 10.3389/fmolb.2021.783268
DO - 10.3389/fmolb.2021.783268
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85123435300
SN - 2296-889X
VL - 8
JO - Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences
JF - Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences
M1 - 783268
ER -