3D graphene-containing structures for tissue engineering

Abstract

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd Graphene and its derivatives have been extensively explored in various fields and have shown great promise toward energy harvesting, environmental protection, and health care. 3D graphene-containing structures (3DGCSs) are especially endowed with useable features relating to physicochemical properties within the hierarchical architectures. Thus, 3DGCSs are increasingly being applied for tissue engineering because of their supportability of human cells and functionalization potential. This review focuses on recent progress in tissue engineering utilizing 3DGCSs, providing insights into fabrication, application, and constraints in bionic research.

3D Graphene Scaffolds for Skeletal Muscle Regeneration: Future Perspectives

“…Besides the stimulation of myoblasts, in vivo implantation of graphene-based devices allows also neo-angiogenesis and this property should be exploited in the future also in skeletal muscle research (Kim et al, 2016;Du et al, 2018). GBM are indeed known to be capable of initiation of neurogenesis and neo-vascularization (Li et al, 2019), paramount to prevent atrophy and tissue necrosis (Gilbert-Honick and Grayson, 2020). Traumatic musculoskeletal injuries are accompanied by loss of blood supply and denervation and GBM might fulfill multiple functions as long as the scaffold is engineered to work in compartments that selectively attach different kinds of cellular population, for example by bioprinting different porosities/concentrations as demonstrated by Holmes et al for bone reconstruction (Holmes et al, 2016).…”

“…Despite 3D printing has been successfully employed for the production of skin, adipose, bone and cardiac muscle (Li et al, 2019), limited research on skeletal muscle has been undertaken. 3D printed disks of polylactic acid are capable of myogenic differentiation induction thanks to cell proximity in printed channels (Rimington et al, 2017).…”

“…Graphene-based materials (GBM) have been studied for several applications in biomedicine due to their unique interactions with proteins and molecules: from the first studies, it was evident that the surface area and chemistry of GBM allowed high adsorption of proteins that can mediate interactions with cells, bacteria and therapeutic compounds that can be delivered by graphene nanoflakes (Palmieri et al, 2018;Di Santo et al, 2019;Papi et al, 2019). Several methods to produce 3D graphene scaffolds have been designed, from hydrogels to electrospun graphene fibers and 3D printed GBM scaffolds (Zhang et al, 2018;Choe et al, 2019a;Li et al, 2019;Palmieri et al, 2020).…”

“…Graphene-based materials have been largely 3D printed or bioprinted (Palmieri et al, 2020). Though studies on 3D-printed GBM for cardiac muscles have been conducted (Choe et al, 2019a;Li et al, 2019), there is a lack of production of 3D printed GBM scaffolds for skeletal muscle regeneration. In this minireview, we want to define a primer to boost research on 3D printed implants for skeletal muscles based on GBM (Zhang et al, 2018).…”

3D Printing of Cytocompatible Graphene/Alginate Scaffolds for Mimetic Tissue Constructs

“…Tissue engineering involves reconstruction and/or functional recovery of malfunctioned tissue ( Amini et al, 2012 ; Dai et al, 2016 ; Han and Du, 2020 ). 3D biocompatible scaffolds serve to provide cell support by facilitating native extracellular matrix formation, promoting cell growth, and if necessary, differentiation ( Kim et al, 2015 ; Li et al, 2019a ). More specifically, optimally porous scaffolds provide channels for diffusion of exogenously delivered and endogenous cell-secreted bioactive factors, mechanical support for maintaining tissue dimensions, and an ECM-like environment ahead of native ECM production ( Hollister, 2005 ).…”