Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 2
Architecture that mimics 3-D cellular architecture and tissue repair. The San Simeon
Piccolo Dome in Venice, Italy. Each of the metal rods has a diameter of ~4 cm, 500 times smaller
than the size of the dome with a diameter of ~20 m. Each rod also serves as a construction scaffold
for building or repairing the dome that is truly embodied in three dimensions (
left panel
). When the
repair and construction is completed, the scaffold is removed as shown (
right panel
)
considered for generating cells/tissue used in human therapy. Although researchers
are well aware of its limitation, it is one of the few limited choices. Thus, it not only
makes diffi cult to conduct a well-controlled study but also would pose problems if
such scaffolds were ever used to grow tissues for human therapies.
Furthermore, after the cells are adapted to the new environment and start to make
their own extracellular matrices, the artifi cial scaffolds that initially helped the cells
should be gradually removed through absorption or biodegradation. This is in anal-
ogy similar to architectural constructions: after the entity is repaired or constructed,
the scaffolds should be removed (Fig.
2
).
An ideal 3-D culture system should be fabricated from a synthetic biological
material with defi ned constituents. Thus the molecular designer self-assembling
peptide nanofi ber scaffolds may be a promising alternative. Figure
3
directly com-
pares the Matrigel with the self-assembling peptide nanofi ber scaffold. They have
the same scales and similar porosity except Matrigel seems to have many particles/
impurities contained within the Matrigel. The peptide nanofi bers, however, do not
exhibit such morphological impurities and display homogeneous structure (Fig.
3
).
