Tissue Engineering. Part B, Reviews

Organoids are widely considered to be ideal in vitro models that have been widely applied in many fields, including regenerative medicine, disease research and drug screening. It is distinguished from other three-dimensional (3D) in vitro culture model systems by self-organization and sustainability in long-term culture. The three core components of organoid culture are cells, exogenous factors and culture matrix. Due to the complexity of bone tissue, and heterogeneity of osteogenic stem/progenitor cells, it is challenging to construct organoids for modeling skeletal systems...

The biologic process of bone healing is complicated, involving a variety of cells, cytokines and growth factors. As a result of bone damage, the activation of a clotting cascade leads to hematoma with a high osteogenic potential in the initial stages of healing. A major factor involved in this course of events is clotting factor XIII (FXIII), which can regulate bone defect repair in different ways during various stages of healing. Autografts and allografts often have defects in clinical practice, making the development of advanced materials that support bone regeneration a critical requirement...

Translation of small-diameter tissue-engineered vascular grafts (TEVGs) for the treatment of coronary artery disease (CAD) remains an unfulfilled promise. This is largely due to the limited integration of TEVGs into the native vascular wall - a process hampered by the insufficient smooth muscle cell (SMC) infiltration and extracellular matrix deposition, and low vasoactivity. These processes can be promoted via the judicious modulation of the SMC towards a synthetic phenotype to promote remodeling and vascular integration; however, the expression of synthetic markers is often accompanied by a decrease in the expression of contractile proteins...

As research associates in clinical experiments, we have an obligation to disclose clinical methodologies and findings in full transparency in ethics. However, inadequate disclosure in results reporting of clinical trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov have been revealed, with approximately half of the trial results not being reported in an applicable manner. Our recent study in clinical trials of regenerative medicine for four kinds of neurological diseases revealed that the rate of result reporting to ClinicalTrials...

Adipose tissue resorption after fat grafting is a major drawback in plastic and reconstructive surgery, which is primarily caused by the insufficient blood perfusion of the grafts in the initial phase after transplantation. To overcome this problem, several promising strategies to boost the vascularization and, thus, increase survival rates of fat grafts have been developed in preclinical studies in recent years. These include the angiogenic stimulation of the grafts by growth factors and botulinum neurotoxin A, biologically active gels and cellular enrichment as well as the physical and pharmacological stimulation of the transplantation site...

Surgical outcomes of pelvic organ prolapse surgery are poor, resulting in a 20% recurrence risk. Following the hypothesis that impaired wound healing is the main determinant of recurrent pelvic organ prolapse, growth factors have the potential to promote wound healing and may improve surgical outcomes. Here, we systematically reviewed the effect of growth factors on vaginal wound healing in both in vitro and animal studies. For each independent comparison, the standardized mean difference and 95% CI were calculated using the Hedges' g correction...

The paradigm shift in the endodontic field from replacement towards regenerative therapies has witnessed the ever-growing research in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine targeting dentin-pulp complex regeneration in the past few years. Abundant literature on the subject has been produced, however, is scattered over diverse areas of knowledge. Moreover, the terminology and concepts are not always consensual, reflecting the range of research fields addressing this subject, from endodontics to biology, genetics, and engineering, among others...

Guided tissue regeneration (GTR) is an important surgical method for periodontal regeneration. By placing barrier membrane on the root surface of the tooth to guide the adhesion and proliferation of periodontal ligament cells, periodontal tissue regeneration can be achieved. This review intends to analyze the current limitations of GTR membranes and to propose possible solutions for developing new ones. Limitations of current GTR membranes include: Nonabsorbable membranes and absorbable synthetic polymer membranes exhibit weak biocompatibility; When applying to a large defect wound, the natural collagen membrane with fast degradation rate have limited mechanical strength, and the barrier function may not be maintained well...

Articular cartilage defects significantly compromise the quality of life in the global population. Although many strategies to repair articular cartilage, including microfracture, autologous osteochondral transplantation, and osteochondral allograft, the therapeutic effects remain suboptimal. In recent years, with the development of cartilage tissue engineering, scientists have continuously improved the formulations of therapeutic cells, biomaterial-based scaffolds, and biological factors, which have opened new avenues for better therapeutics of cartilage lesions...

Sharing the methods and results of clinical trials with full transparency is an ethical obligation for those involved in clinical research. In this regard, ClinicalTrials.gov requires reporting of results to the registry within 1 year of completion of the trial. However, a poor results reporting rate has been pointed out, with approximately half of the trial results not been reported. It has been suggested that one of the reasons behind this could be the influence of the sponsors that conduct the clinical trials...

Critical-sized bone defects (CSBD) represent a significant clinical challenge, stimulating researchers to seek new methods for successful bone reconstruction. The aim of this systematic review is to assess whether bone marrow stem cells (BMSCs) combined with tissue-engineered scaffolds have demonstrated improved bone regeneration in the treatment of CSBD in large preclinical animal models. A search of electronic databases (PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library) focused on in vivo large animal studies identified ten articles according to the following inclusion criteria: 1...

Tendon injuries disrupt the transmission of forces from muscle to bone, leading to chronic pain, disability, and a large socioeconomic burden. Tendon injuries are prevalent; there are over 300,000 tendon repair procedures a year in the United States to address acute trauma or chronic tendinopathy. Successful restoration of function after tendon injury remains challenging clinically. Despite improvements in surgical and physical therapy techniques, the high complication rate of tendon repair procedures motivates the use of therapeutic interventions to augment healing...

Small-caliber tissue engineered vascular grafts (TEVGs, luminal diameter < 6 mm) are promising therapies for coronary or peripheral artery bypassing surgeries or emergency treatments of vascular trauma, and a robust seed cell source is required for scalable manufacturing of small-caliber TEVGs with robust mechanical strength and bioactive endothelium in future. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) could serve as a robust cell source to derive functional vascular seed cells and potentially lead to generation of immunocompatible engineered vascular tissues...

OBJECTIVE: To conduct a systematic review of studies reporting the treatment of tendon injury using biomaterials in animal models. METHODS: A systematic search was conducted to retrieve studies involving animal models of tendon repair using biomaterials, in PubMed (database construction to August 2022) and Ovid-Embase (1946 to August 2022). Data related to tendon repair with biomaterials were extracted by two researchers respectively. Risk of bias was assessed following the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions...

Peripheral nerve injury (PNI) is a common disease that has a profound impact on the health of patients but has a poor prognosis. The gold standard for the treatment of peripheral nerve defects is autologous nerve grafting, notwithstanding, due to the extremely high requirement for surgeons and medical facilities, there is great interest in developing better treatment strategies for PNI. Low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) is a noninterventional stimulation method characterized by low-intensity pulsed waves...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Diabetes is a disease that plagues over 463 million people globally. Approximately 40 million of these patients have type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), and the global incidence is increasing by up to 5% per year. T1DM is where the body's immune system attacks the pancreas, specifically the pancreatic beta cells, with antibodies to prevent insulin production. Although current treatments such as exogenous insulin injections have been successful, exorbitant insulin costs and meticulous administration present the need for alternative long-term solutions to glucose dysregulation caused by diabetes...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Deferoxamine (DFO) is an iron chelator with FDA approval for the clinical treatment of iron excess. As a well-established stabilizer of hypoxia inducible factor-1α(HIF-1α), DFO can efficiently upregulate HIF-1α and relevant downstream angiogenic factors, leading to accelerated vascularization. Moreover, as increasing studies have focused on DFO as a hypoxia-mimetic agent in recent years, it has been shown that DFO exhibited multiple functions including stem cell regulation, immunoregulation, pro-vascularization and pro-osteogenesis...

The consequences of military conflict, accidents, and diseases have led to the definition - and subsequent study - of the pathological condition now known as volumetric muscle loss (VML). VML is a significant injury to skeletal muscle tissue on a scale that is endogenously irrecoverable and leads to chronic functional deficits and long-term disability. Currently, there lacks a definitive approach to meaningfully restore the tissue and function lost by those afflicted, ushering a need for scientific activities and associated funding to both facilitate a deeper understanding of the pathobiology of VML as well as to develop and assess clinically relevant therapeutics and treatment strategies...