Tissue-engineered fibrillar fibronectin matrices are not only lovely, but also functional for regenerative medicines and in vitro model systems

Abstract

Fibronectin is an ubiquitous extracellular matrix protein which comprises fibrous three-dimensional microenvironments in native tissues. Although its importance and fibrillogenesis in vivo has been considerably investigated, yet current in vitro tissue engineering platforms for fibrillar fibronectin pose major drawbacks such as low scalability, applicability, and reproducibility. Due to such platform limitations, understanding of spatiotemporal mechanobiology between cells and fibrillar fibronectin matrices largely remains unexplored. This article briefly underlines current tissue-engineering platforms and mechanobiological understanding of fibrillar fibronectin as well as suggests potential directions in future fibronectin researches.

Keywords

• Fibrillar fibronectin
• Extracellular matrix
• Integrin
• Mechanobiology
• Fibrillogenesis
• Tissue engineering