Biomaterials for regenerative medicine

The following article is based on a presentation given by Samuel I. Stupp of Northwestern University as part of Symposium X-Frontiers of Materials Research on April 13, 2004, at the Materials Research Society Spring Meeting in San Francisco. Materials designed at the molecular and supramolecular scales to interact with cells, biomolecules, and pharmaceuticals will have a profound impact on technologies targeting the regeneration of body parts. Materials science is a great partner to stem cell biology, genomics, and proteomics in crafting the scaffolds that will effectively regenerate tissues lost to trauma, disease, or genetic defects. The repair of humans should be minimally invasive, and thus the best scaffolds would be liquids programmed to create materials inside our bodies. In this regard, self-assembling materials will play a key role in future technologies. This article illustrates how molecules are designed to assemble into cell scaffolds for human repair and provides examples relevant to brain damage, fractures of the skeleton, spinal cord injuries leading to paralysis, and diabetes.