CONTROLLING A CELLULAR NICHE IN SCAFFOLD DESIGNS FOR EPITHELIAL TISSUE ENGINEERING - Intelligent Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine - page 455

Chapter 24

CONTROLLING A CELLULAR NICHE IN
SCAFFOLD DESIGNS FOR EPITHELIAL
TISSUE ENGINEERING

Zhilian Yue, a Yan-Ru Lou, a Nur Aida Abdul Rahim, b
and Hanry Yu a-f*
a InstituteofBioengineeringandNanotechnology, A*STAR, The Nanos, #04-01,
31Biopolis Way, 138669Singapore
b Departmentof Physiology, YongLoo Lin School of Medicine,
NationalUniversity of Singapore,#03-03,2 Medical Drive, 117597Singapore
c NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences andEngineering, Centre forLife
Sciences (CeLS), #05-01,28Medical Drive, 117456Singapore
d Singapore-MIT Alliance, National Universityof Singapore, E4-04-10,
4Engineering Drive 3, 117576Singapore
e NUSTissue-Engineering Programme, DSO Labs, NationalUniversity ofSingapore,
117597Singapore
f Departmentof Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts InstituteofTechnology,
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139,USA
*hanry [e-mail]; [e-mail]

Epithelial tissues have sophisticated spatially and temporally
definedbiochemicalandstructuralfeatures,whicharetheprereq-
uisites for functioning tissues. These include extracellular matrix
(ECM) proteins and growth factors, both in terms of presence
as well as presentation, topographical cues that direct polar-
ity, mechanical properties of the underlying substratum, which