Description

Biomaterials for tissue healing have been a promising challenge in the past twenty years. During this time frame, many efforts for developing new devices to support different clinical practices failed to complete the translation from “the bench to bedside”. One of the main reasons why the biomaterials field did not abide by the past exciting promises is due to the lacking of a complete investigation of the physiological and molecular mechanisms involved in the biomaterials/tissue cross-talk. This reason should not be considered an oversight but rather a new prospective to face the biomaterial development in order to accelerate the process of clinical translation.

This research topic will aim to collect different strategies to develop biomaterials that support restoration of different tissues such as skin, bone, cartilage, cornea, blood vessel as well as cardiac tissue. Synthetic, natural and hybrid biomaterials could be included in the topic.

We would like to focus the papers selection on 4 different points:
i) Biofabrication: nanoprinting, rapid prototyping, microfluidic based printing, 3D bioprinting.
ii) Biomaterial multi-functionalization: tissue interface engineering, multi drug delivery, gene delivery.
iii) Immune Engineering: immune response modulation by biomaterials or drug delivery systems.
iv) Translation: translating research from the lab to the clinic, advancing biomaterials in their product development.

These specific topics will provide a greater understanding of the molecular and physiological mechanisms that influence tissue healing leading to the synthesis of biomimetic materials and the design of implantable scaffolds.