CONSIDERATIONS ON THE STRUCTURE OF BIOMATERIALS FOR SOFT- AND HARD-TISSUE ENGINEERING - Intelligent Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine - page 509

Chapter 26

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE STRUCTURE
OF BIOMATERIALS FOR SOFT- AND
HARD-TISSUE ENGINEERING

Hideaki Kagami, a Hideki Agata, a Makoto Satake, b
and Yuji Narita c
a Tissue Engineering Research Group, Division of Molecular Therapy,
Advanced Clinical Research Center, the Institute of Medical Science,
the University of Tokyo 4-6-1, Shirokanedai, Minato-ku,
Tokyo, 108-8639, Japan
b Integrative Technology Research Institute, Teijin Limited,
Hino, Tokyo, Japan
c Department of Cardiac Surgery, Nagoya University,
Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan
[e-mail]; [e-mail]; [e-mail];
[e-mail]

In the field of tissue engineering, various novel biomaterials have
been developed in order to achieve regeneration of target tis-
sues. Scaffolds for a specific tissue require specific characteristics
such as mechanical properties, biocompatibility, and degenera-
tionperiod.Intermsofmechanicalproperties,oneoftheultimate
goals of these materials is to mimic naturally existing scaffolds
suchastissuematrices.However,thephysiologicalnatureofnatu-
rally existing tissues is still di cult to mimic by most artificially
generated biomaterials. Controlling the degeneration period is