Tissue engineering is an interdisciplinary field of biomedical research that aims for the restoration of tissue defects or even the replacement of complete organs (Griffith and Naughton, 2002). For this purpose, tissue constructs are generated by seeding stem cells or tissue-specific cells on three-dimensional biomaterials, also referred to as scaffolds. These materials should mimic the natural extracellular matrix to ideally support the physiological function and regenerative capacity of the seeded cells (Hutmacher et al., 2004; Hutmacher and Cool, 2007). Moreover, they should rapidly vascularize to guarantee sufficient oxygen supply and, hence, cellular survival after their implantation into a tissue defect (Blinder et al., 2015; Cerino et al., 2017). In fact, the lack of an adequate vascularization is a major reason for the failure of particularly extensive and complex materials for the treatment of large-scale tissue defects (Maggi et al., 2003; Kneser et al., 2006; Leibig et al., 2016; Weigand et al., 2018; Yuan et al., 2018).
展开▼
