Decellularized Extracellular Matrix Scaffolds for Skin Tissue Engineering

Decellularized extracellular matrix (dECM) is considered as a biological scaffold derived from whole tissues and/or organs, in which the cellular components have been removed by means of physical, chemical, and/or biological methods, while micro- and macro-scale structural components and functional ECM proteins and polysaccharides are left. In addition to preserve the compositional integrity similar to the native ECM, a major superiority of decellularized ECM can be noted as preservation of similar tensile strength to native tissues as well as retaining most of the inherent native vasculature, to about the third or fourth level of branching. During recent decades, various forms and formulations of dECM have been designed and engineered for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications including sheets, hydrogels, composites, cell-laden dECM, and other dECM-based bioconstructs. Although conventional approaches have revealed promising outcomes in tissue engineering, they mostly require blending with other biomaterials or post-treatments (e.g., secondary cell seeding) in order to improve their biochemical and biomechanical performance. Highlighting the emergence of ۳D bioprinting technology, numerous studies have been attempted to fabricate a rich source of bioink that possesses intrinsic cues for cell communication and other aspects of tissue-specific reconstruction. Despite significant progress in developing dECM bioinks for regenerating various tissues such as skin, there are still some considerations regarding dECM bioinks including (I) their printability, (II) preserving cell viability and behavior, (III) mechanical and structural integrity, (IV) biomimicry, and (V) degradation profile, which should be addressed in research studies. Finally, it should be mentionedthat dECM-based products have recently emerged as an attractive substrate for clinical application. For example, AlloDerm® (BioHorizons) was applied to skin regeneration.