Bioactive biomaterials for engineering tissue healing

The increasingly use of biomimetic approaches in the design for materials for the engineering of tissue healing were discussed. It was found that a particular interest in biomimetic materials was to replace the key features of the extracellular matrix. These include development of materials for cell in-growth matrices in tissue regeneration and wound healing, presentation of adhesion signals and the display of growth factor binding sites. Two important approaches have been employed for tissue healing which include fibrin that represents an interesting platform material as a cell in-growth matrix and the development of synthetic mimicks of fibrin, consisting of water-soluble polymer chains cross-linked by plasmin-sensitive reactive peptides.