Engineered Microenvironments for 3D Cell Culture and Regenerative Medicine

Dear Colleagues,

The overall aim of this Special Issue is to enhance the understanding and present a broad overview of the recent advances in the area of engineered three-dimensional (3D) microenvironments developed during the last five years for innovative cell culture, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications. The importance and the role of the complex microenvironments that include different cell types and extracellular matrix, as well as various chemical and physical factors are gradually become recognized as a key for the biologically accurate in vitro modelling and the reconstruction of the functional tissues for the regenerative medicine purposes. At the same time, many challenges in this field are still open. These burning questions include, for example, the structural and functional relevance of the modelled and reconstructed tissues to the native prototypes, the methodology applicable for the characterization and the comparative analysis of such systems, and many other problems.

The Special Issue on the “Engineered microenvironments for 3D cell culture and regenerative medicine” is open for the original papers and reviews exploring the effects of the reconstructed tissue-, organ- or disease-specific microenvironments on cellular growth, differentiation, motility and other biological responses. The broad spectra of 3D engineered microenvironments can be discussed, including 3D organoids, scaffold- and gel-based cultures, cell sheets, tissue barriers models, microfluidic and bioreactor-aided systems.

The topics and themes of this unique collection will include but not limited to, the following:

• Quantitative studies revealing the role of multiple controlled interacting factors in cell biological behaviour modulation in the context of normal and pathological tissue growth.
• Comparative studies of different types of engineered 3D cell culture microenvironments.
• Biological accuracy and relevance of 3D engineered cell culture microenvironments.
• Industrial applications and clinical translation of the results obtained using 3D engineered cell culture microenvironments.
• Advanced and innovative research applications of 3D engineered cell culture microenvironments.
• Reconstruction of functional tissues for regenerative medicine applications.
• Methodology for the analysis of the biological, physical, chemical, and material parameters of 3D engineered microenvironments for cell culture and regenerative medicine.

Dr. Anna E. Guller
Guest Editor

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