A critical issue in the general area of Advanced Therapies is the need
for temporary scaffolds to regenerate tissue defects. The scaffolds
should be specifically designed to create environments that promote
tissue development and not merely to support the maintenance of communities
of cells. To achieve that goal, highly functional scaffolds may
combine specific morphologies at different scales and dimensions capturing
characteristic features and functionalities of the extra-cellular
matrix. Many biomaterials have been proposed to produce scaffolds.
We have a particular interest in developing systems based in biodegradable
polymers. Those demanding applications require a combination of
mechanical properties, processability, cell-friendly surfaces and tunable
biodegradability that are specific for the application. Electrospinning is
a versatile technique used to produce synthetic polymeric ultrafine
fibers. It enables the production of non-woven meshes with fiber diameters
in the nanometer range with high surface area-to-volume ratio
and high porosity. Those meshes can mimic some aspects of the extracellular
matrix of human tissues and be used as scaffolds for tissue
engineering applications. We developed such structures to obtain the
release of bioactive agents intended to direct and control stem cell differentiation.
This talk will review our latest developments for bone and
cartilage tissue engineering of scaffolds having microstructures at different
scales and dimensions.