Elastomeric Recombinant Protein-based Biomaterials.
Elastomeric protein-based biomaterials, produced from elastin derivatives, are widely investigated as promising tissue engineering scaffolds due to their remarkable properties including substantial extensibility, long-term stability, self-assembly, high resilience upon stretching, low energy loss, and excellent biological activity. These elastomers are processed from different sources of soluble elastin such as animal-derived soluble elastin, recombinant human tropoelastin, and elastin-like polypeptides into various forms including three dimensional (3D) porous hydrogels, elastomeric films, and fibrous electrospun scaffolds. Elastin-based biomaterials have shown great potential for the engineering of elastic tissues such as skin, lung and vasculature. In this review, the synthesis and properties of various elastin-based elastomers with their applications in tissue engineering are described.
Center for Biomedical Engineering, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, 02139, USA ; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02139, USA ; Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02139, USA.
Nasim
N
Annabi
Suzanne M
SM
Mithieux
Gulden
G
Camci-Unal
Mehmet R
MR
Dokmeci
Anthony S
AS
Weiss
Ali
A
Khademhosseini