Speaker
Description
Growth factor (GF) based therapies in regenerative medicine are limited by the high cost, fast degradation kinetics, and lack of specificity as consequence of the multiple functions of GF in the cell. One common GF therapeutic scenario is the administration of VEGF to support vascularization during tissue regeneration. The therapeutic window for VEGF treatment is narrow: low doses are safe but not sufficient to yield a therapeutic benefit, and slightly higher doses lead to the growth of angioma-like vascular structures. Moreover, angiogenesis in vivo occurs by sustained angiogenic stimulus over a month to achieve stable vessels, and the outcome of the process is highly dependent on the spatiotemporal distribution of the proangiogenic signal. In this talk different approaches to control the presentation of angiogenic signals in biomaterials for tissue regeneration using phototriggers will be presented.
