Liquid Crystal Elastomers—A Path to Biocompatible and Biodegradable 3D-LCE Scaffolds for Tissue Regeneration

Abstract

The development of appropriate materials that can make breakthroughs in tissue engineering has long been pursued by the scientific community. Several types of material have been long tested and re-designed for this purpose. At the same time, liquid crystals (LCs) have captivated the scientific community since their discovery in 1888 and soon after were thought to be, in combination with polymers, artificial muscles. Within the past decade liquid crystal elastomers (LCE) have been attracting increasing interest for their use as smart advanced materials for biological applications. Here, we examine how LCEs can potentially be used as dynamic substrates for culturing cells, moving away from the classical two-dimensional cell-culture nature. We also briefly discuss the integration of a few technologies for the preparation of more sophisticated LCE-composite scaffolds for more dynamic biomaterials. The anisotropic properties of LCEs can be used not only to promote cell attachment and the proliferation of cells, but also to promote cell alignment under LCE-stimulated deformation. 3D LCEs are ideal materials for new insights to simulate and study the development of tissues and the complex interplay between cells.

Rapid expansion in the WAVE bioreactor of clinical scale cells for tumor immunotherapy

“…Another popular culture technique, three-dimensional (3D) cell culture, could mimic in vivo conditions, such as dynamic interaction between tumor or immune compartments, demonstrating more organotypic properties than static cultures. 44 3D cell culture is widely used in laboratory investigations, including in the research on cell differentiation, 5 stem-cell-based regenerative medicine, 45 skin, tissue, or organoid regeneration, [47][48][49] tumor microenvironment, and drug susceptibility. 46,50 Although 3D culture has proven to be superior as compared to its traditional static counterparts; the high cost, challenging setup, low reproducibility, and timeconsumption have limited the utilization on clinical scale-up cell immunotherapy.…”

Self-Assembly of Organic Nanomaterials and Biomaterials: The Bottom-Up Approach for Functional Nanostructures Formation and Advanced Applications

“…employed as an active compound in the cosmetics applications for the improvement of the moisture retention [33,43]. Due to their ability to include a vast array of lipophilic and hydrophilic molecules, LCs nanostructures are particularly interesting for drug delivery and for tissue engineering applications [43,44]. More specifically, thermodynamically stable liquid crystalline nanocarriers (LCNs) are formed upon the water dispersion of amphiphiles molecules with lyotropic lipids (such as unsaturated monoglycerides, phospholipids, glycolipids).…”

Body‐temperature shape‐shifting liquid crystal elastomers

“…3 Since the conception of the liquid crystal elastomers, various novel engineering applications have been proposed based on the reversible actuation including actuators, [4][5][6] soft robotics, 7,8 optical elements 9 and mechanical damping. 10,11 Additionally, LCEs are proposed for biomedical applications such as artificial muscle, [12][13][14] scaffolds for tissue engineering, 15 drugdelivery vehicles, 16 vascular implants, 17 interbody fusion cages 18 and synthetic intervertebral disc. 19 However, the proposed biomedical applications mostly focused on either the non-actuation behavior or externally controlled shape-activation.…”