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REVIEW article

Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2024.1484151

Current advances in the development of microRNA-integrated tissue engineering strategies: A cornerstone of regenerative medicine

Provisionally accepted
Luis Germán Castañón-Cortés Luis Germán Castañón-Cortés 1Luis Alberto Bravo-Vázquez Luis Alberto Bravo-Vázquez 1Grecia Santoyo-Valencia Grecia Santoyo-Valencia 1Sara Medina-Feria Sara Medina-Feria 1Padmavati Sahare Padmavati Sahare 2Asim K. Duttaroy Asim K. Duttaroy 3*Sujay Paul Sujay Paul 1
  • 1 Tecnologico de Monterrey campus Queretaro, Queretaro, Mexico
  • 2 Institute of Advanced Materials for Sustainable Manufacturing, Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM), Queretaro, Querétaro, Mexico
  • 3 University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Regenerative medicine is an innovative scientific field focused on repairing, replacing, or regenerating damaged tissues and organs to restore their normal functions. A central aspect of this research arena relies on the use of tissue-engineered scaffolds, which serve as structural supports that mimic the extracellular matrix, providing an environment that orchestrates cell growth and tissue formation. Remarkably, the therapeutic efficacy of these scaffolds can be improved by harnessing the properties of other molecules or compounds that have crucial roles in healing and regeneration pathways, such as phytochemicals, enzymes, transcription factors, and non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). In particular, microRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of tiny (20-24 nt), highly conserved ncRNAs that play a critical role in the regulation of gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. Accordingly, miRNAs are involved in a myriad of biological processes, including cell differentiation, proliferation, and apoptosis, as well as tissue regeneration, angiogenesis, and osteogenesis. On this basis, over the past years, a number of research studies have demonstrated that miRNAs can be integrated into tissue-engineered scaffolds to create advanced therapeutic platforms that precisely modulate cellular behavior and offer a controlled and targeted release of miRNAs to optimize tissue repair and regeneration. Therefore, in this current review, we discuss the most recent advances in the development of miRNA-loaded tissue-engineered scaffolds and provide an overview of the future outlooks that should be aborded in this area of study in order to lay the groundwork for the clinical translation of these tissue engineering approaches.

    Keywords: MicroRNAs, Tissue Engineering, targeted delivery, Regenerative Medicine, tissue repair, gene regulation, Gene Therapy

    Received: 21 Aug 2024; Accepted: 07 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Germán Castañón-Cortés, Bravo-Vázquez, Santoyo-Valencia, Medina-Feria, Sahare, Duttaroy and Paul. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Asim K. Duttaroy, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.