抄録
It has been widely accepted that regenerative medicine including stem cell therapy and tissue engineering offers a huge potential technique to whole organ and tissue transplantation for diseased, failed or malfunctioned organs. There were already launched eighteen products in market after the approval of KFDA. However, these products were more developed cell therapy products rather than tissue engineered products. To reconstruct a new tissue by tissue engineering, three basic components such as (1) primary/stem cells, (2) biomaterials as scaffold substrates and (3) growth factors must be needed.
Among of these three key components, scaffolds as biomaterials might be played a very critical role in tissue engineered products. The function of scaffolds is to direct the growth of cells seeded within the porous structure of the scaffold or of cells migrating from surrounding tissue, eventually mimicking a natural extracellular matrix. For the scaffold materials, the family of poly(α-hydroxy acid)s are extensively clinically used or tested due to good biocompatibility, controllable biodegradabilitiy, and relatively good processability. The main reasons of the retard of FDA approval for tissue engineered products might be the induction of inflammation reaction in terms of safety. In our laboratory, we have been investigated the reduction of inflammation reaction of poly(α-hydroxy acid)s by the hybridization with natural biomaterials. In this review, poly(α-hydroxy acid)s/natural hybrid scaffold biomaterials have been introduced in order to reduce the host response resulting in approaching to a more natural three dimensional environment and supporting biological signals for tissue growth and reorganization of organ.
