Scaffold

Cell biology

Engineering

Biology

Biomedical engineering

Materials science

Chromatography

3D cell culture

Extracellular matrix

Tissue engineering

Biochemistry

Matrix (chemical analysis)

Nanotechnology

Cell adhesion

Chemistry

Cell

High-throughput screening

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

The extracellular matrix (ECM) has pleiotropic effects, ranging from cell adhesion to cell survival. In tissue engineering, the use of ECM and ECM-like scaffolds has separated the field into two distinct areas—scaffold-based and scaffold-free. Scaffold-free techniques are used in creating reproducible cell aggregates which have massive potential for high-throughput, reproducible drug screening and disease modeling. Though, the lack of ECM prevents certain cells from surviving and proliferating. Thus, tissue engineers use scaffolds to mimic the native ECM and produce organotypic models which show more reliability in disease modeling. However, scaffold-based techniques come at a trade-off of reproducibility and throughput. To bridge the tissue engineering dichotomy, we posit that finding novel ways to incorporate the ECM in scaffold-free cultures can synergize these two disparate techniques.

The ECM: To Scaffold, or Not to Scaffold, That Is the Question