Question

When making a scaffold for tissue engineering, would one made from just collagen suffice? Why.

Answer 1

Answer-

According to the given question-

• Collagen is a protein and mainly found in hard and soft tissues in human as well as in animal also.
• Collagen also provide support to tissues and maintain biological, structural integrity of extracellular matrix or ECM.
• Collagen are a integrity and have high permeability, good biocompatibility , high biodegradability and   low immunogenicity.
• Collagen is used for making scaffold material used in tissue engineering due to its several good property but have poor mechanical property and to overcome this they were cross-linked by using chemical methods or by some physical methods and changed by adding with some natural, synthetic polymers or adding some inorganic materials during scaffold preparation.
• Scaffold made up of  collagen used in cartilage, ligament, bone, nerve, blood vessel , tendon, as well as in skin tissue engineering.
• We know that inside the tissue there is extracellular matrix or ECM which contains several  extracellular molecules which are secreted by several types of cells and the ECM helps in providing the spatial and mechanical signals as well as support to tissues.
• Collagen have fibrillar structure which helps in extracellular scaffolding and also helps in regulation of cell adhesion, cell morphology, migration as well as differentiation of cells.
• Collagen form a covalent cross-linking and which provide stable structure and because of protein is have good  biodegradable property.
• Collagen is easily broken down with the help of enzyme collagenase and after that several non-specific enzymes such as proteinases and gelatinases, further degrade the collagen molecules.
• collagen have capability to induce activation of platelet by participating in intrinsic clotting cascade and can work as alternate to thrombin.
• collagen is a natural polymers and have good biological compatibility, high osteoconductivity and low immunogenicity, They also can form complex when mixed with other polymer and increases their cell attachment property as well as also in delivering soluble molecules.