Scientists have investigated how regrowing tissue using scaffolds affects the cell's environment and properties. 

Tissue crosslinking is an important natural process in wound healing, but high levels of cross-linking are also associated with numerous diseases including cancer. In tissue engineering, scaffolds made from synthetic or natural materials, such as the extra celluar matrix (ECM), to reconstruct soft tissue such as tendons or arteries. It was thought that chemical crosslinking of these scaffolds didn't affect their biological activity but Viola Vogel and colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), Switzerland have now found that this crosslinking has a large impact on the cell's microenvironment. 

Vogel's team have used fluroscence imaging to watch how reseeded cells model the scaffold and gradually build up their new matrix environment in response to the scaffolds cues. They used fluorescence-labeled fibronectin cells in either cell-derived ECM scaffolds or into the fibronectin matrix which had been assembled by reseeded cells.

'The crosslinking of a scaffold greatly impairs many of their functions: the amount of newly assembled extracellular matrix and the extent to which this matrix is stretched and mechanically unfolded,' says Vogel. 

Peter Friedl, an expert in cell-matrix interactions Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, comments 'the molecular state of the extracellular matrix and also the cells can be observed in a time-resolved manner, which provides unique opportunities to address cell-tissue interactions in tissue generation and remodelling.' 

Vogel says that several follow up studies are currently underway. 'We will reseed the same scaffolds with stem cells and a number of other cell types to ask how cell signalling pathways are affected,' she says. 

Alexandra Haywood 

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