ABSTRACT
Over the last decade, considerable advances in the engineering of biomaterials that elicit specific cellular responses have been attained by exploiting biomolecular recognition. These biomimetic engineering approaches focus on integrating recognition and structural motifs from biological macromolecules with synthetic and natural substrates to generate bio-inspired, biofunctional materials. These strategies represent a paradigm shift in biomaterials development from conventional approaches which deal with purely synthetic or natural materials, and provide promising schemes for the development of novel bioactive substrates for enhanced tissue replacement and regeneration. Because of the central roles that extracellular matrices (ECMs) play in tissue morphogenesis, homeostasis, and repair, these natural scaffolds provide several attractive characteristics worthy of “copying” or mimicking to convey functionality for molecular control of cell function, tissue structure, and regeneration. Four ECM “themes” have been targeted (i) motifs to promote cell adhesion, (ii) growth factor binding sites that control presentation and delivery, (iii) protease-sensitive sequences for controlled degradation, and (iv) structural motifs to convey mechanical properties.
