What’s the Issue? Biomimetic Interfaces in Biomedical Devices

by Jos Lenders | Aug 10, 2017

This week’s Advanced Healthcare Materials special issue with João Mano, Ali Khademhosseini, and Insung Choi.

Cover Feature Issue 15 SI Featured Image 2

Advanced Healthcare Materials publishes a special issue on biomimetic interfaces in biomedical devices this week, guest-edited by João Mano (University of Aveiro, Portugal), Ali Khademhosseini (Harvard-MIT, USA), and Insung Choi (KAIST, Korea). This top-level issue includes an Editorial, a Review, two Progress Reports, four Communications, and eight Full Papers from leading teams of outstanding scientists in this extremely hot field of research – see the full list below.

The general performance of biomedical devices is dictated by the crosstalk of the material’s surface with the biological environment. The interface regulates important aspects at the biological and physicochemical points of view, and can be controlled using bio-inspired principles, by modifying the chemical nature of the biomaterial, exposure of biochemical signals or design of special physical and topological features. This special issue therefore collects contributions related to science and engineering of biomimetic interfaces that can tune important properties such as biomineralization, cell recruitment, behavior, and targeting, adhesiveness and wettability, adaptability and response to external stimuli, self-assembly, and protein adsorption and reorganization.

The front cover shown on the top right visualizes the work by Shoji Takeuchi (Uni Tokyo, Japan) and co-workers on rod-shaped neural units for 3D neural network connections, and the back cover displayed on the left features the study by AHM board member Kristi Anseth (Uni Colorado Boulder, USA) and collaborators on clickable microgel scaffolds for 3D cell encapsulation.

Xingyu Jiang and Lei Mou (NCNST, China) provide a comprehensive Review on materials for microfluidic immunoassays, and Manuel Salmeron-Sanchez (Uni Glasgow, UK) and Amaia Cipitria (Charité Berlin, Germany) discuss the latest developments in engineering cellular microenvironments. The Progress Report by Orit Shefi (Bar Ilan Uni, Israel) and colleagues on interactions of neurons with physical environments is highlighted on the inside front cover of this special issue on the right.

Guest editor and AHM board member João Mano et al. present multilayer membranes with nanotopography for cell alignment and morphology control (featured on the inside back cover on the left), and guest editor Insung Choi et al. demonstrate zwitterionic lipid masks for cell-cell interaction modulation. AHM board member Peter Fratzl, Ekaterina Skorb (MPI Colloids and Interfaces, Germany) et al. report on the effect of nanostructured titanium surfaces on preosteoblasts (highlighted with a frontispiece on the bottom right).

Other excellent original research articles are contributed by Samir Mitragotri (UC Santa Barbara, USA), Brigitte Städler (Aarhus Uni, Denmark), Noo Li Jeon (Seoul National Uni, Korea), Caitlin Howell (Harvard, USA) and Joanna Aizenberg, Shutao Wang (CAS, China) and Lei Jiang, Michiya Matsusaki, Mitsuru Akashi (Osaka Uni, Japan), and Patrick Couvreur, Bing Xu (Brandeis Uni, USA) and Daniela Dinulescu (Harvard, USA), together with all their co-authors – see the full list below.