Using Polymeric Materials to Control Stem Cell Behavior for Tissue Regeneration

Patients with organ failure often suffer from increased morbidity and decreased quality of life. Current strategies of treating organ failure have limitations, including shortage of donor organs, low efficiency of grafts, and immunological problems. Tissue engineering emerged about two dec-ades ago as a strategy to restore organ function with a living, functional engineered substitute. However, the ability to engineer a functional organ is limited by a limited understanding of the interactions between materials and cells that are required to yield functional tissue equivalents. Poly-meric materials are one of the most promising classes of materials for use in tissue engineering, due to their biodegradability, flexibility in process-ing and property design, and the potential to use polymer properties to control cell function. Stem cells offer potential in tissue engineering because of their unique capacity to self-renew and differentiate into neu-rogenic, osteogenic, chondrogenic, and myogenic lineages under appro-priate stimuli from extracellular components. This review examines recent advances in stem cell–polymer interactions for tissue regenera-tion, specifically highlighting control of polymer properties to direct adhe-sion, proliferation, and differentiation of stem cells, and how biomaterials can be designed to provide some of the stimuli to cells that the natural extracellular matrix does. Birth Defects Research (Part C) 96:63