Fibrous scaffolds for tissue engineering

Abstract

Scaffold, along with seed cells and microenvironment, is an essential component of tissue engineering, and plays an important role in engineered tissue regeneration. Fibrous scaffold is an important part of scaffold materials due to its ability to mimic the structure of native extracellular matrix. With the advancement of materials science and related techniques, fibers can be modified either chemically or physically to gain special physicochemical and biological properties that can provide an artificial niche environment for cell adhesion, proliferation and differentiation and ultimately lead to tissue regeneration. This paper reviews recent advances in the preparation and the application of fibrous scaffold for engineered tissue regeneration.