Carbon nanotube interaction with extracellular matrix proteins producing scaffolds for tissue engineering

Abstract

Abstract:In recent years, significant progress has been made in organ transplantation, surgical reconstruction, and the use of artificial prostheses to treat the loss or failure of an organ or bone tissue. In recent years, considerable attention has been given to carbon nanotubes and collagen composite materials and their applications in the field of tissue engineering due to their minimal foreign-body reactions, an intrinsic antibacterial nature, biocompatibility, biodegradability, and the ability to be molded into various geometries and forms such as porous structures, suitable for cell ingrowth, proliferation, and differentiation. Recently, grafted collagen and some other natural and synthetic polymers with carbon nanotubes have been incorporated to increase the mechanical strength of these composites. Carbon nanotube composites are thus emerging as potential materials for artificial bone and bone regeneration in tissue engineering.

Engineering of a polymer layered bio-hybrid heart valve scaffold

“…We intended to modify our DBPECM in its native hydrated form using HTE approach suitable for TEHV and optimized a protocol that resulted in hydrophilic Bio-Hybrid scaffold with a contact angle similar to that of BP (Table 1). A previous study demonstrated that HTE using ECM gel resulted in increased mechanical strength but compromised the 3D structure that favours cellular adhesion, retains hydrophilicity and helps in cellular differentiation [25,34]. Our protocol also retained the native 3D structure of BP for development of an improved scaffold for valve fabrication without processing and compromising the tensile strength (Table 1).…”

Porous three-dimensional carbon nanotube scaffolds for tissue engineering

“…These results coupled with the ability to fine tune surface roughness of 3D carbon nanotube scaffolds by using nanotubes of varying diameters suggest that 3D all-carbon scaffolds may be exploited to control/govern cell fate purely based on nanotopographic cues. In addition, nanostructured scaffolds offer several advantages over conventional polymeric scaffolds such as (1) a single cell can contact millions of nanofibers (for example MWCNTs and SWCNTs), thereby resulting in the effective transmission of subtle topographic cues from the underlying scaffold substrate to the cell and (2) nanotopography and surface roughness of MWCNT and SWCNT scaffolds may result in a better host-implant integration reducing the risk of failure of biomedical implants [65]. …”

Strategies for directing the structure and function of three-dimensional collagen biomaterials across length scales

“…In addition to mineral nanoparticles, collagen matrices have been doped with carbon [194], silver [195] and gold [196] nanoparticles. Carbon nanotubes are of particular interest because they are on the same size scale as collagen fibrils, with diameters on the order of nanometers and lengths on the order of microns.…”