Nanotechnology Applications for Tissue Engineering

Sabu Thomas, Yves Grohens, Neethu Ninan

• Publisher: William Andrew
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780323353038
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Tissue engineering involves seeding of cells on bio-mimicked scaffolds providing adhesive surfaces. Researchers though face a range of problems in generating tissue which can be circumvented by employing nanotechnology. It provides substrates for cell adhesion and proliferation and agents for cell growth and can be used to create nanostructures and nanoparticles to aid the engineering of different types of tissue. Written by renowned scientists from academia and industry, this book covers the recent developments, trends and innovations in the application of nanotechnologies in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. It provides information on methodologies for designing and using biomaterials to regenerate tissue, on novel nano-textured surface features of materials (nano-structured polymers and metals e.g.) as well as on theranostics, immunology and nano-toxicology aspects. In the book also explained are fabrication techniques for production of scaffolds to a series of tissue-specific applications of scaffolds in tissue engineering for specific biomaterials and several types of tissue (such as skin bone, cartilage, vascular, cardiac, bladder and brain tissue). Furthermore, developments in nano drug delivery, gene therapy and cancer nanotechonology are described. The book helps readers to gain a working knowledge about the nanotechnology aspects of tissue engineering and will be of great use to those involved in building specific tissue substitutes in reaching their objective in a more efficient way. It is aimed for R&D and academic scientists, lab engineers, lecturers and PhD students engaged in the fields of tissue engineering or more generally regenerative medicine, nanomedicine, medical devices, nanofabrication, biofabrication, nano- and biomaterials and biomedical engineering.

• Provides state-of-the-art knowledge on how nanotechnology can help tackling known problems in tissue engineering
• Covers materials design, fabrication techniques for tissue-specific applications as well as immunology and toxicology aspects
• Helps scientists and lab engineers building tissue substitutes in a more efficient way

Chapter 1

Nanomedicine and Tissue Engineering

C.K. Sudhakar¹, Nitish Upadhyay¹, Arpit Verma¹, Ankush Jain¹, R. Narayana Charyulu² and Sanjay Jain¹, ¹Smriti College of Pharmaceutical Education, Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India, ²Department of Pharmaceutics, NGSMIPS, Mangalore, Karnataka, India

Nanomedicine drives the convergence of nanotechnology and medicine; it is delineated as the application of nanotechnology in healthcare. Tissue engineering is classified as an associate field of biomaterials and engineering. Merging the best of both worlds: nanomedicine and tissue engineering has great impact in human healthcare practice. Smart drug delivery systems (liposomes, dendrimers) that are incorporated within matrices (polymeric scaffolds and hydrogels) for tissue engineering approaches show sustained delivery of drugs from 3D matrices for tissue engineering. One major application of nanomedicine in medical field is the delivery of drugs to the damaged cells. Carbon nanotubes, dendrimers, and liposomes are important tissue engineering scaffold materials and drug delivery systems which deliver drugs to impaired tissues. Medical nanorobots which are rigid, biocompatible nanometer-scale materials can be used for improving tracking of cells, sensing of microenvironments, delivering of transfection agents, and scaffolding for incorporating with the host’s body. These molecular machines will be medicines of tomorrow.

Keywords

Nanomedicine; tissue engineering; drug delivery system; nanorobots; scaffold materials

1.1 Introduction

Nanoparticles were used by artisans during the ninth century in Mesopotamia to generate glittering effects on the surfaces of pots [1]. The advent of nanotechnology in medicine was initiated after Richard Feynman, a physicist, quoted the sentences “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” [2]. Technological advances in the field of nanotechnology have led to the birth of a new field of study, nanomedicine, a blend of nanotechnology and medicine [3]. Nanotechnology in drug delivery has contributed several nanocarriers that have inimitable properties in biological system.

1.1.1 Nanomedicine

The main perception of nanomedicine is to formulate in such a way that it will occupy the small spaces in our body and target specific parts of body. Incorporation of nanoparticle into our body for treatment or prevention of disease is impossible in the past, but now researchers are keen to explore nanoscale medicine for the welfare of people. Nanomedicine may also escalate the effectiveness of pharmaceutical research. Nanomedicine may be defined as the monitoring, repair, construction, and control of human biological systems at the molecular level, using engineered nanodevices and nanostructures [1,2]. It drives the convergence of nanotechnology and medicine (Figure 1.1). It is delineated as the application of nanotechnology in healthcare. Nanomedicine, a twig of nanotechnology, deals with engineered nanodevices, nanostructures, and nanodelivery system intrusion at the nanoscale for healing disease or refurbishing damaged tissues. The use of nanotechnology to advance nanodelivery systems with more precision and targeting toward the unhealthy or diseased tissues reduces the toxicity of drugs to healthy tissues. The resources being dispensed for nanotechnology across the research world try to designate that nanomedicine may become a common part of healthcare system in few years. Nanomedicine has the potential to enable early detection and prevention, and to essentially improve diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up diseases [3,4].

Figure 1.1 A blend of nanotechnology and medicine is nanomedicine.

1.1.2 Tissue Engineering

Tissue engineering was classified as an associate field of biomaterials and engineering, but having grown in scale and connotation, tissue engineering has become a discipline of its own [5]. Tissue and organ failures are serious and common medical conditions for which treatment options include organ transplantation, surgical repair, artificial prostheses, and drug therapy [6–8]. A researcher in the field of tissue engineering tries to replace the damaged tissues or organs with functional engineered substitutes in body. Stem cells have added a new drive to tissue engineering. They have the ability to self-renew and commit to specific cell lineages in response to appropriate stimuli, providing excellent regenerative potential that will most likely lead to functionality of the engineered tissue [9]. Present biology and pathology reveal that many diseases originate from malfunctioned cells [10]. Differentiation of stem cells into different types of tissues or organs is still a major limiting factor in the area of tissue engineering mainly due to the complexity and multicellular structure of the tissues and organs [9,10].

1.2 Relationship of Nanomedicine and Tissue Engineering

Tissue engineering and nanomedicine are new branches of technology and blend of both have virtuous impact on the health sector. There is a strong need for drug delivery systems that can deliver biological signals/growth factors from biomaterials and tissue engineering scaffolds. The ability of nanomedicine to deliver a wide variety of protein and nucleic acid drugs to intracellular compartments from tissue engineering and regenerative scaffolds could greatly enhance control of important processes such as inflammation, angiogenesis, and biomineralization [11]. Nanoscale materials are the fundamental building blocks and functional subunits of cells, including subcellular organelles and extracellular matrix (ECM) components [12]. Applications of nanomedicine are not limited to nanoimaging, diagnosis, drug delivery, and tissue engineering. It has broad spectrum of application in healthcare system [12,13]. Nanostructured surfaces are better carved to stimulate biomolecule and cellular responses than surfaces at coarser length scales [14–16]. Nanomedicine is defined as monitoring, repair, construction, and control of human biological systems at the molecular level using engineered nanodevices and nanostructures [17]. Nanotechnology in drug delivery has contributed several nanocarriers that can have inimitable properties in biological system. Smart drug delivery systems (liposomes, dendrimers) that are incorporated within matrices (polymeric scaffolds and hydrogels) for tissue engineering approaches show sustained delivery of drugs from 3D matrices for tissue engineering (Figure 1.2). A tissue engineering approach is to use a scaffold, either in combination with cells and other extrinsic factors to simulate the environment at the site of the injury. There are two approaches for tissue engineering to regenerate or repair the tissue or organ. The first approach is to regenerate tissue/organ using biomolecules with biomaterial scaffold. The second approach is to regenerate tissue/organ using donor cell or own cell with biomaterial scaffold (Figure 1.3). Whatever the approach being used in tissue engineering, the critical issues to optimize any tissue engineering strategy toward producing a functional equivalent tissue are the source of the cells and substrate biomaterial to deliver the cells in particular anatomical sites where a regenerative process is required [18,19]. Both approaches require 3D scaffold or biomaterial to stitch the repaired tissue. Biomaterials play vital role in the tissue engineering and the spatial and temporal structure of scaffold should be in specified manner to heal the tissue or organ rapidly. The design of the scaffold depends on polymers, method of preparation, molecule size, etc., hereby nanomedicine come into the role of scaffold for tissue engineering. For researcher, ECM is the key component for success of tissue repair. The ECM promotes a unique microenvironment that fosters tissue organization. Scaffold mimics ECM and provides all the desired properties of ECM at the site of injury of tissue or organ. With the development of modern nanotechnology, scaffolds possessing nanometer-scaled features are attracting increased attention for their application in tissue engineering. The dawn of nanotechnology has fetched with it an astounding number of potential applications in the field of tissue engineering. The advent of nanomedicine has provided a systematic approach to study and use of material properties in the size range close to the molecular level. Understanding the properties of materials at nanoscale provides opportunities for fine-tuning of certain properties as well as development of novel functionalities for specific application in tissue engineering.

Figure 1.2 Use of nanocarriers in three-dimensional scaffolds for tissue engineering.

Figure 1.3 Approaches of tissue engineering.

1.2.1 Nanomedicine Approaches in Bone Tissue Engineering

Failure of some biomaterial in bone tissue engineering (BTE) has revealed that incompatibilities existed between osteoblasts (bone-forming cells) and conventional implant materials. Bone is comprised of hierarchically arranged collagen fibrils, hydroxyapatite (HA), and proteoglycans [20]. These structural components of bone exist from the macroscopic level (centimeter range), all the way down to the molecular level (nanometer range). Polymers (macromolecules) are the primary materials for scaffolds in various tissue engineering applications, including bone and other mineralized tissues. These polymers as scaffold produce poor integration with the existing bone or tissue structure. As we know that nanoscale materials exhibit different properties when compared to bulk materials. Nanostructured biomaterials are designed to mimic natural bone, thereby solving the problem of conventional implants. Nanomaterial constituent components in the range of 1–100 nm have exhibited enhanced cytocompatibility, mechanical, and electrical properties compared with respective conventional micronscale materials [20,21]. One type of novel nanomaterial, helical rosette nanotubes (HRNs), is novel organic nanotubes that mimic the natural nanostructure of collagen and other components in bone. HRNs are newly developed materials evolved from the self-assembly process of DNA base pair building blocks in body solutions. They are soft nanotubes with helical architecture that mimics natural collagen [21]. HRNs of a guanine–cytosine building block possess key elements for their sequential self-assembly toward the formation of stable nanotubes. HRNs have unique chemical and physical properties that make them particularly attractive for drug delivery and tissue engineering applications. HRN hydrogels a...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• List of Contributors
• About the Editors
• Preface
• Chapter 1. Nanomedicine and Tissue Engineering
• Chapter 2. Biomaterials: Design, Development and Biomedical Applications
• Chapter 3. Electrospinning of Polymers for Tissue Engineering
• Chapter 4. Biomimetic Nanofibers for Musculoskeletal Tissue Engineering
• Chapter 5. Hydrogels—Promising Candidates for Tissue Engineering
• Chapter 6. 3D Scaffolding for Pancreatic Islet Replacement
• Chapter 7. Scaffolds with Antibacterial Properties
• Chapter 8. Dermal Tissue Engineering: Current Trends
• Chapter 9. Chitosan and Its Application as Tissue Engineering Scaffolds
• Chapter 10. Cell Encapsulation in Polymeric Self-Assembled Hydrogels
• Chapter 11. Nanotechnology-Enabled Drug Delivery for Cancer Therapy
• Chapter 12. Nanomedicine in Theranostics
• Chapter 13. Upconversion Nanoparticles
• Chapter 14. Gold Nanoparticles in Cancer Drug Delivery
• Chapter 15. Toxicology Considerations in Nanomedicine
• Chapter 16. Role of Nanogenotoxicology Studies in Safety Evaluation of Nanomaterials
• Chapter 17. Future of Nanotechnology in Tissue Engineering
• Index