Design of biomimetic glycopolymers for liver tissue engineering

Abstract

Recently, the development of biomaterials for liver tissue engineering has focused on the design of biomimetic glycopolymers that can perform specific hepatocyte behaviors and direct liver regeneration through molecular recognition. Molecular recognition of glycopolymers by hepatocytes has been achieved by chemical modification of biomaterials with galactose moiety as a specific ligand that can incur specific interactions with asialoglycoprotein receptors (ASGPR) on the hepatocytes. The biomimetic glycopolymers potentially mimic many roles of extracellular matrix (ECM) in liver tissues, such as attachment, proliferation, migration, differentiation and survival of hepatocytes. This review discusses mechanism of specific interaction between galactose moieties of the galactose-carrying polymers and ASGPR of hepatocytes. Liver tissue engineering typically employs synthetic three-dimensional ECMs to induce long-term and stable differentiated hepatocyte functions. Therefore, the synthetic ECMs can be fabricated from two classes of biomaterials: natural polymers and synthetic ones. The criteria to design biomimetic glycopolymers such as galactose density, topology of ECM, deposited natural ECM, coculture system and cell source are addressed. The potential mechanisms on hepatocellular signaling by the ECM are also summarized. ？ 2008 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.