Biomaterials for Soft Tissue Engineering: Concepts, Methods, and Applications

Soft tissues connect, support, or surround other structures and organs of the body, including skeletal muscles, tendon vessels, and nerves supplying these components. Also, organs such as the heart, brain, liver, and kidney are considered as soft tissues. Acute and chronic injury may cause transient or permanent damage to organs and soft tissues. If the damage is severe, the natural physiological repair and restoration mechanisms are not possible. The repair or regeneration using tissue engineered (TE) scaffolds has been considered as a clinical solution. TE approach involves the replacement of damaged parts using grafts made from natural or synthetic or composite polymers. Choosing the polymer with appropriate biological, physicochemical, and mechanical properties is the key to make a successful TE scaffold, and it is still a challenging task. Moreover, the fabrication technique and choice of cells or growth factors for encapsulation to develop the graft also play a crucial role. Therefore, in this chapter, we have highlighted the grafts developed for engineering soft tissues such as blood vessels, skin, cartilage, intervertebral disc, tendon, and skeletal muscle. We have restricted our focus on electrospun scaffolds, and injectable hydrogels prepared using polymers include collagen (Col), chitosan (CS), hyaluronic acid (HA) alginate (Alg), poly(caprolactone) (PCL), poly(lactic acid) (PLA), poly(glycolic-lactic acid) (PLGA), and their composites. This chapter will help the readers to understand the choice of materials and fabrication techniques for developing successful TE scaffolds for soft tissue engineering applications.