Title : Role of textile materials in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine
Abstract:
The convergence of textile science, biomaterials engineering and regenerative medicine is creating new opportunities for the development of functional scaffolds capable of supporting tissue repair and regeneration. Textile materials are particularly attractive for tissue engineering because their hierarchical fibrous architecture can be engineered across fiber, yarn and fabric scales, enabling simultaneous control of porosity, surface characteristics, mechanical behavior, anisotropy and cellular microenvironment. Recent research demonstrates that weaving, knitting, braiding, spacer-fabric technology, electrospinning and other fiber-based manufacturing approaches can produce scaffolds tailored to the structural and functional requirements of different biological tissues.
Natural and synthetic biomaterials, including collagen, silk fibroin, chitosan, alginate, polycaprolactone and biodegradable polyesters, can be converted into fibers and assembled into two- and three-dimensional textile architectures. Electrospinning provides nanoscale fibrous structures that resemble important features of the extracellular matrix, while woven, knitted and braided structures offer superior control over bulk architecture, mechanical strength, compliance and directional properties. These characteristics make textile-based scaffolds particularly relevant to skin, bone, cartilage, tendon, ligament, nerve, vascular, cardiac and other soft-tissue regeneration applications.
An important advantage of textile technology is the ability to establish structure–property–function relationships through precise manipulation of fiber diameter, orientation, yarn construction, fabric density, pore geometry and interlacement pattern. Furthermore, textile scaffolds can be combined with hydrogels, extracellular-matrix components, nanoparticles, growth factors and 3D-bioprinted structures to create multifunctional and multiscale regenerative platforms. Emerging developments in smart textiles, cell-laden fibers, digital manufacturing and artificial intelligence are further expanding the possibilities for personalized and responsive tissue-engineered constructs.
Despite these advances, challenges remain concerning vascularization, cell infiltration, degradation control, mechanical matching, sterilization, reproducibility, scale-up and clinical translation. Future research should therefore focus on hybrid textile–bioprinting strategies, gradient and patient-specific architectures, intelligent biomaterials and predictive computational design. The integration of textile engineering with cellular and molecular regenerative strategies has the potential to transform textiles from conventional structural materials into dynamic, biomimetic and biologically instructive platforms for next-generation tissue regeneration.
