Biodegradable polymeric fiber structures in tissue engineering.

Tissue engineering offers a promising new approach to create biological alternatives to repair or restore function of damaged or diseased tissues. To obtain three-dimensional tissue constructs, stem or progenitor cells must be combined with a highly porous three-dimensional scaffold, but many of the structures purposed for tissue engineering cannot meet all the criteria required by an adequate scaffold because of lack of mechanical strength and interconnectivity, as well as poor surface characteristics. Fiber-based structures represent a wide range of morphological and geometric possibilities that can be tailored for each specific tissue-engineering application. The present article overviews the research data on tissue-engineering therapies based on the use of biodegradable fiber architectures as a scaffold.