Prof. Hae-Won Kim and Dr. Jung-Hwan Lee reviewed biomaterials roles for promoting angiogenesis in tissue regeneration. A review article entitled “Materials roles for promoting angiogenesis in tissue regeneration” has been published in Progress in Materials Science (IF 30.5).

(see the article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079642520300967).

In collaboration with Prof. Jonathan C. Knowles at UCL Eastman Dental Institute (UK) and Dr. Prakash Parthibana in ITREN, they reviewed recently highlighted therapeutic roles of biomaterials for accelerating angiogenesis in tissue regeneration.

Enabling angiogenesis is critical for the success of tissue repair therapies and the fate of tissue-engineered constructs.

Although many biochemical signaling molecules have been used, their biological functions in vivo are known to be limited, mainly due to their short lifetime and poor activity.

Matrices (or engineered biomaterials), beyond the biochemical signals, play pivotal roles in stimulating angiogenic processes with long-lasting efficacy with great angiogenic activity.

In this review, they discussed the proangiogenic effort taken to repair and regenerate various tissues including skin, bone, muscle and nerve, focusing on the roles of engineered matrices. This includes the design of pore structure and physico-chemical properties (nanotopology, stiffness, chemistry and degradability), the tailoring of matrices for proper presentation of growth factors and their crosstalks with adhesion ligands, the controlled and sustained delivery of angiogenic molecules and metallic ions, and the engineering of cells and construction of prevascularized tissues.