Poly(ester amides) (PEAs) - Scaffold for tissue engineering applications

Implementation of comprehensive medical infrastructures throughout the world, especially in the highly populated developing nations, led to an ever increasing number of diagnostic incidents of all sorts including early detection of organ failures. Organ failures or malfunctioning often require full organ transplantations. However, the shortage of organs to meet the demand is the major obstacle in proper exploitation of the medical advancements. In this regard, tissue engineering aided cell transplantation has recently emerged as a promising alternative. Tissue engineering has the potential to regenerate any kind of tissue or organ in the body. For tissue regeneration, cells are seeded on a scaffold and are allowed to grow into a new specific tissue. Although it is possible to use metals, ceramics, or glasses for the fabrication of the scaffolds, polymers have attained considerable attention of the researchers. The reason behind this is the versatility of their properties which enables polymer based scaffolds to provide a platform for replacement, restoration, and regeneration of lost tissue structure and or function. Poly(ester amide) (PEA), a synthetic polymer, exhibits excellent thermal and mechanical properties along with biodegradability and biocompatibility which makes it a strong candidate for tissue engineering. In this article, a comprehensive review is presented on the recent developments of PEAS and PEA-based scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. Their methods of preparation, characterization, properties, and applications have been summarized. Other issues regarding the electrospinning for the fabrication of scaffolds are also discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.