Biopolymer Methods in Tissue Engineering (Methods in Molecular Biology, 238)

There is an urgent need to develop new approaches to treat conditions as- ciated with the aging global population. The surgeon’s approach to many of these problems could be described as having evolved through three stages: Removal: Traditionally, diseased or badly damaged tissues and structures might simply be removed. This was appropriate for limbs and non-essential organs, but could not be applied to structures that were critical to sustain life. An additional problem was the creation of disability or physical deformity that in turn could lead to further complications. Replacement: In an effort to treat wider clinical problems, or to overcome the limitations of amputation, surgeons turned to the use of implanted materials and medical devices that could replace the functions of biological structures. This field developed rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s, with heart valve and total joint replacement becoming common. The term “biomaterial” was used increasingly to describe the materials used in these operations, and the study of biomaterials became one of the first truly interdisciplinary research fields. Today, biomaterials are employed in many millions of clinical procedures each year and they have become the mainstay of a very successful industry.

Because the rapidly developing field of tissue engineering encompasses all the major scientific disciplines-including materials science, polymer chemistry, biology, and medicine-it has often been difficult to uncover the full range of laboratory methods required in tissue engineering. In Biopolymer Methods in Tissue Engineering, expert laboratory researchers bring together in a standard format all the diverse laboratory methods needed to perform state-of-the-art tissue engineering research. Topics range from the synthesis, processing, and characterization of specific biomaterials, through the successful use of scaffolds in the engineering of tissues, to techniques useful in evaluating the biological quality of scaffold-engineered tissues. Subjects of special interest include the incorporation of biological molecules into scaffold biomaterials and the use of a wide range of methods and techniques to generate a comprehensive description of cell-polymer construct quality. Additional techniques can be used to develop effective in vitro models for drug evaluation or to investigate cell and tissue differentiation. Each readily reproducible protocol follows a uniform format that includes essential background information, step-by-step instructions by an expert, equipment and reagent lists, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls.
Comprehensive and state-of-the-art, Biopolymer Methods in Tissue Engineering offers both advanced and novice investigators a diverse collection of readily reproducible techniques for generating living cell-polymer constructs in their laboratories and for evaluating their biological quality.