Inorganics in tissue engineering

Nowadays, tendon injuries represent a global health issue that annually affects millions of individuals, resulting as a clinical load on health systems. In this PhD project, scaffolds were designed and developed, aiming at the design of an innovative platform to achieve tendon tissue repair and structurally and mechanically support the cell homing, avoiding the formation of fibrotic tissue prone to re-rupture. The scaffolds designed and developed were based on biopolymers, as polysaccharides and thermoplastic polymers. These allow the production of scaffolds with controlled elastic and mechanical properties to guarantee an effective support during the new tissue formation. Moreover, they were prepared using innovative and versatile manufacture techniques, including electro- and centrifugal spinning, and freeze-drying. Inorganic nanomaterials were investigated and employed as doping for the scaffolds to enrich them with unique properties, such as mechanical, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and magnetic ones, in order to improve tissue conduction, and to support and enhance the cell growth. The developed systems resulted as promising candidates for tendon reconstruction, and the inorganics demonstrated to enhance the scaffolds properties, resulting safe in vivo, and able to protect the surrounding tissues from acute inflammatory responses.