ABSTRACT
Tissue engineering aims to produce functional artificial tissues, which can be used as either substitutes or models for drug tests and disease studies. The initial paradigm was to develop three-dimensional (3-D) structures from preferably biodegradable materials, and seed these structures with the prevalent cells of the target organ. Nanoscale technologies are emerging as important and powerful tools for tissue engineering and drug discovery purposes. The ability to differentiate cells, nanofibrillar scaffolds, and microfibrillar extracellular matrix (ECM) secretions in real time without labeling is a very strong tool for the temporal monitoring of tissue engineering scaffolds. One approach used to engineer tissues is controlling the cellular self-assembly process by restricting the geometry of cell aggregation. It can be anticipated that the innovations will find their way into tissue-engineered structures intended for clinical applications, thus significantly improving their success rate and functionality.
