ENT Institute and Otorhinolaryngology Department of Eye & ENT Hospital, State Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology and MOE Frontiers Center for Brain Science, Fudan University, Shanghai 200031, China.
Molecules. 2022 Apr 25;27(9):2757. doi: 10.3390/molecules27092757.
Tissue engineering (TE) involves the combination of cells with scaffolding materials and appropriate growth factors in order to regenerate or replace damaged and degenerated tissues and organs. The scaffold materials serve as templates for tissue formation and play a vital role in TE. Among scaffold materials, silk fibroin (SF), a naturally occurring protein, has attracted great attention in TE applications due to its excellent mechanical properties, biodegradability, biocompatibility, and bio-absorbability. SF is usually dissolved in an aqueous solution and can be easily reconstituted into different forms, including films, mats, hydrogels, and sponges, through various fabrication techniques, including spin coating, electrospinning, freeze drying, and supercritical CO-assisted drying. Furthermore, to facilitate the fabrication of more complex SF-based scaffolds, high-precision techniques such as micro-patterning and bio-printing have been explored in recent years. These processes contribute to the diversity of surface area, mean pore size, porosity, and mechanical properties of different silk fibroin scaffolds and can be used in various TE applications to provide appropriate morphological and mechanical properties. This review introduces the physicochemical and mechanical properties of SF and looks into a range of SF-based scaffolds that have recently been developed. The typical applications of SF-based scaffolds for TE of bone, cartilage, teeth and mandible tissue, cartilage, skeletal muscle, and vascular tissue are highlighted and discussed followed by a discussion of issues to be addressed in future studies.
组织工程（TE）涉及将细胞与支架材料和适当的生长因子结合起来，以再生或替代受损和退化的组织和器官。支架材料作为组织形成的模板，在 TE 中起着至关重要的作用。在支架材料中，丝素蛋白（SF）作为一种天然存在的蛋白质，由于其优异的机械性能、可生物降解性、生物相容性和生物可吸收性，在 TE 应用中引起了极大的关注。SF 通常溶解在水溶液中，通过各种制造技术，包括旋涂、静电纺丝、冷冻干燥和超临界 CO 辅助干燥，可以很容易地重新构成不同的形式，包括薄膜、垫、水凝胶和海绵。此外，为了促进更复杂的 SF 基支架的制造，近年来已经探索了高精度技术，如微图案化和生物打印。这些过程有助于不同丝素蛋白支架的表面积、平均孔径、孔隙率和机械性能的多样性，并可用于各种 TE 应用，以提供适当的形态和机械性能。本综述介绍了 SF 的物理化学和机械性能，并研究了最近开发的一系列 SF 基支架。强调并讨论了 SF 基支架在骨、软骨、牙齿和下颌组织、软骨、骨骼肌和血管组织的 TE 中的典型应用，随后讨论了未来研究中需要解决的问题。
