Engineering acellular materials to promote vasculature regeneration
The de novo generation of vasculature using exogenous cell sources
may be required for some medical applications, but in other cases it
might be possible to coax existing endogenous cells to undergo
neovascularization in vivo. In the past decade, biomaterials have been
used as a carrier to deliver single or multiple GFs for therapeutic
neovascularization (Lee et al., 2011). These strategies were met with
limited success due to the very rapid release and short half-life of the
GFs, as well as an inability to control sequential release. More
recently, researchers have focused on developing advanced materials
that allow much finer control over the spatial and temporal release of
different GFs. Such developments include the sustained release (see
Glossary, Box 1) and sequential delivery (see Glossary, Box 1) of
multiple GFs, approaches that allow a much closer approximation of
the precise signaling events that occur during vascular formation
in vivo. In addition, engineered materials can play a role not only as
delivery vehicles for therapeutic agents, but also to directly stimulate
neovascularization through physicochemical interactions between the
biomaterials and the host tissue.