Vincenzo Guarino
National Research Council of Italy, Italy
Title: Electrofluidinamics: a new toolbox to design instructive platforms for tissue engineering and molecular therapies
Biography
Biography: Vincenzo Guarino
Abstract
A large variety of processes and tools is recently emerging to design instructive materials with controlled chemical, physical and biological properties for tissue engineering and drug delivery. Among them, electro fluido dynamic techniques (EFDTs) are revolutionising traditional biomaterial’s manufacturing approach, basically identifing relatively complex fabrication processes to design innovative devices with restrained manufacturing costs but high functional complexity. By the use of electrostatic forces, biomaterials may be manipulated in different forms for the fabrication of a large set of 3D platforms with controlled micro/nanostructure (i.e., scaffolds, nanoparticles, capsules, mono or multicompartment systems, microgels and microscaffolds) able to more efficiently address in vitro and in vivo cell activities. EFDTs allow to produce fibres and/or particles at micro- and/or submicro-metric size scale through a rational selection of polymer solution properties and process conditions, thus creating different 3D devices able to incorporate biopolymers (i.e., proteins, polysaccharides) or active molecules (e.g., growth factors, chemotherapeutics) for countless applications in tissue engineering, drug delivery and cancer therapy. Here, we overview the basic EFDTs technologies – i.e., electrospinning, electrospraying and electrodynamic atomization – and recent current advances in experimental setups to develop bio-inspired platforms for tissue engineering, drug delivery and cancer therapy.