Stem Cells and Engineered Scaffolds for Regenerative Wound Healing

• Published in: Bioengineering (Basel) Vol. 5; no. 1; p. 23
• Main Authors: Dash, Biraja C, Xu, Zhenzhen, Lin, Lawrence, Koo, Andrew, Ndon, Sifon, Berthiaume, Francois, Dardik, Alan, Hsia, Henry
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 09.03.2018; MDPI
• Subjects: Aging; Angiogenesis; Animal models; Bioengineering; Biomaterials; Biomedical materials; Cell survival; chronic wound; Collagen; Cytokines; Diabetes; Diabetes mellitus; Epidermal growth factor; Fibroblasts; Hydrogels; Ischemia; Medicine; natural polymer; Paracrine signalling; Polyvinyl alcohol; Review; scaffold; Scaffolds; stem cell; Stem cell transplantation; Stem cells; surface modification; Survival; synthetic polymer; Tumor necrosis factor-TNF; Umbilical cord; Vascular endothelial growth factor; Wound healing; United States > US; synthetic polymer; natural polymer; stem cell; scaffold; surface modification; chronic wound
• ISSN: 2306-5354; 2306-5354
• DOI: 10.3390/bioengineering5010023

The normal wound healing process involves a well-organized cascade of biological pathways and any failure in this process leads to wounds becoming chronic. Non-healing wounds are a burden on healthcare systems and set to increase with aging population and growing incidences of obesity and diabetes. Stem cell-based therapies have the potential to heal chronic wounds but have so far seen little success in the clinic. Current research has been focused on using polymeric biomaterial systems that can act as a niche for these stem cells to improve their survival and paracrine activity that would eventually promote wound healing. Furthermore, different modification strategies have been developed to improve stem cell survival and differentiation, ultimately promoting regenerative wound healing. This review focuses on advanced polymeric scaffolds that have been used to deliver stem cells and have been tested for their efficiency in preclinical animal models of wounds.