Textile technologies for 3D scaffold engineering

This chapter reviews textile-engineering techniques as versatile platform technologies for biomedical applications and how these approaches could be adapted to develop functional, 3D scaffolds for tissue engineering. Given the vast differences in the physical and structural properties of diverse tissue such as heart, skin, ligaments, bone, etc., it is important to select both suitable scaffolding materials as well as to engineer the nano- and micro-structural multiscale architecture of the ensuing scaffolds according to the specific tissues under consideration. Textile engineering is also discussed, as it provides critical platform technologies for creating "smart" fiber-based scaffolds that mimic some of the structural and functional properties of the extracellular matrix found in target tissues, and thus can assist in organ repair or regeneration.