Among the various possible embodiements of Advanced Therapies and in particular of Tissue
Engineering the use of temporary scaffolds to regenerate tissue defects is one of the key issues.
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 and surface chemistry with
the local release of bioactive agents.
Many biomaterials have been proposed to produce scaffolds aiming the regeneration of a wealth
of human tissues. 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 need to be tailored for
the specific application envisioned. Those biomaterials are usually processed by different routes
into devices with wide range of morphologies such as biodegradable fibers and meshes, films or
particles and adaptable to different biomedical applications.
In our approach, we combine the temporary scaffolds populated with therapeutically relevant
communities of cells to generate a hybrid implant. For that we have explored different sources
of adult and also fetal stem cells. We are exploring the use of adult MSCs, namely obtained from
the bone marrow for the development autologous-based therapies. We also explore the paracrine
signalling of cells to generate effective differentiation of the stem cells into the lineages of
interest.
This talk will review our latest developments of co-cultures with stem cells and also
extracellular vesicles for advanced biomedical devices and therapies.