Injuries and diseases lead to organ failure which is a major health problem worldwide. Although autografts or allografts have been lifesaving, however, there are major challenges with these approaches, and it is difficult to recover the damaged tissue completely. On the other hand, tissue engineering is considered as a promising alternative or complementary solution to these techniques. Tissue engineering utilizes biomaterials, alone or in combination with living cells, biochemicals or physical factors to make tissue-like structures and provide advantages once implanted in vivo. We can efficiently control tissue morphogenesis using cell-containing scaffolds and, stimulate tissue growth in situ by using cell-free biomaterials. Although cell-free biomaterials have limited effectiv...[ Read more ]

Injuries and diseases lead to organ failure which is a major health problem worldwide. Although autografts or allografts have been lifesaving, however, there are major challenges with these approaches, and it is difficult to recover the damaged tissue completely. On the other hand, tissue engineering is considered as a promising alternative or complementary solution to these techniques. Tissue engineering utilizes biomaterials, alone or in combination with living cells, biochemicals or physical factors to make tissue-like structures and provide advantages once implanted in vivo. We can efficiently control tissue morphogenesis using cell-containing scaffolds and, stimulate tissue growth in situ by using cell-free biomaterials. Although cell-free biomaterials have limited effectiveness compared to cell-containing structures, they have the benefit of availability as “off the shelf” for clinical trials. Accordingly, here we first develop an injectable cell-free biomaterial based on starch micro/nanospheres and a thermosensitive chitosan hydrogel with the potential to be used in different tissue engineering applications. Then, to investigate the potential application of the starch particles for drug delivery purposes, we load them with curcumin; a highly cytotoxic drug against cancer cells. We address the challenges like curcumin’s hydrophobicity and fast degradation at physiological pH by encapsulation in the particles. Subsequently, we investigate the effects of curcumin-loaded starch particles on the viability of MG-63 cells as osteosarcoma cell model. In the last project, we develop a new injectable thermosensitive cartilage-resembling hydrogel with long-term drug release and high mechanical strength. Two therapeutics including kartogenin (KGN) and diclofenac sodium (DS) are used in this system to effectively promote chondrogenesis of stem cells and to act as anti-inflammatory drug, respectively. We produce KGN-loaded starch particles by a droplet microfluidic chip and encapsulate DS in halloysite nanotubes (HNTs) which are subsequently doped into the maleimide-modified chitosan hydrogel to provide controlled drug release with high mechanical performance.