Advances in the field of soft tissue engineering

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the advances in the field of soft tissue engineering highlighting the advantages of the use of drug delivery systems instead of pure, regenerative grafts. Tissue engineering evolved dramatically, from natural occurring materials to cell-seeded and drug-loaded engineered materials, from macro- to micro- and nanoscale. It is most important to mention the evolution from the last century because this is the period when, based on scientific approaches, the outcomes became exponential. From an evolutionary point of view, both pure regenerative as well as the drug-loaded systems are now studied, in preclinical and clinical phases. In fact, these two general classes of systems should be studied together because the properties of the drug-loaded systems are strongly dependent on the support characteristics. In the field of soft tissue engineering, some materials are intensively studied: chitosan and its derived materials; collagen and gelatin, polyvinyl alcohol, polycaprolactone, etc. The recent advances in this field are related to the active components which are used for loading these materials in order to improve or even induce new properties/functionalities. Special attention over recent decades has been devoted to the faster healing, antimicrobial and antitumoral activity of these materials and, consequently, this chapter is mainly devoted to these aspects.