Scaffold Design for Tissue Engineering

Tissue engineering has emerged as a promising alternative approach in the treatment of malfunctioning or lost organs. In this approach, a temporary scaffold is needed to serve as an adhesive substrate for the implanted cells and a physical support to guide the formation of the new organs. In addition to facilitating cell adhesion, promoting cell growth, and allowing the retention of differentiated cell functions, the scaffold should be biocompatible, biodegradable, highly porous with a large surface/volume ratio, mechanically strong, and malleable. A number of three-dimensional porous scaffolds fabricated from various kinds of biodegradable materials have been developed. This paper reviews some of the advances in scaffold design focusing on the hybrid scaffolds recently developed in the authors' laboratory.