Composite Layered Scaffolds for Vascular Tissue Engineering

摘要

It has been demonstrated that extracellular matrix (ECM) influences cellular response, such as survival, development, shape, migration, polarity, and behaviour of cells, by interacting with cellular adhesion molecules, growth regulators, binding proteins, proteolytic enzymes, and enzyme inhibitors (1). Tissue engineering scaffolds composed of ECM derived from intact mammalian tissues have been shown to facilitate the reconstruction of various tissues in both clinical and animal studies (2). Moreover, it has been demonstrated that the use of decellularized matrices, obtained with a detergent-enzymatic method, permit to obtain scaffolds with ECM unaltered ultrastructure, and could represent an alternative tissue-engineered approach to the repair or replacement of tissue defects (3, 4).