ABSTRACT
Advances in nanotechnology provided the basis for fabrication of nanoparticulate delivery systems with large ratios of surface area to volume, rendering them very effective within the scaffold microenvironment. After successfully engineering a tissue, nanodevices can be useful for triggering desired processes and for following tissue development, where functionality is dependent on the specific material chosen. Carbon nanotubes have been used as multimodal sensors for chemotherapeutic drugs or reactive oxygen species, where adsorption of these species on the surface of the nanotubes uniquely altered their photoluminescence spectra. Nanotechnologies clearly have had an impact on tissue engineering and still have great potential to advance therapeutic methods based on tissue engineering. The synthesis of new nanostructures and their incorporation into existing macro- and microtechnologies have led to improvements in the ability to provide a true biomimetic microenvironment to the developing tissue.
