Fabrication of nanostructured scaffolds for tissue engineering applications

Abstract

The field of tissue engineering is rapidly growing nowadays, and the development of the bio-functional scaffolds to mimic the natural environment of the body tissue to replace the damaged or diseased tissues. Use of nanomaterials to develop nanostructured biomaterial scaffolds showing enhanced biological functions than microstructured materials. Nanostructured materials have higher surface area and biomimetic nature, hence allow better cell adhesion than conventional materials, which is needed for materials used for tissue engineering applications. Unlike conventional materials, nanomaterials mimic resembling natural extracellular matrix (ECM) to support better protein adsorption and also stimulate enhanced tissue regeneration. Here, we address different categories of biomaterials used to fabricating nanostructured scaffolds for tissue regeneration applications. The desired properties required for various tissue engineering scaffolds and its methods of fabrication, current development, and future directions of these methodologies are discussed. In addition to that, the special emphasis is given on bone tissue engineering and three dimensional (3D printing) technologies to manufacture tissue engineering scaffolds using various nanomaterials are also discussed in this chapter.