Biomaterials for Bone Regeneration

Stem cell technology for in vitro bone tissue engineering 423

scaffold-based approaches are limited in the creation of large tissues, due

to an intrinsic slow diffusion process through the scaffold. Despite diverse

bioreactors, most of the engineered constructs are still limited within sev-

eral millimetres in dimension (Fr ö hlich et al ., 2010). In this regard, the

creation of ‘vascularized’ tissue constructs is indispensable to enable the

fabrication of larger tissues (Baiguera and Ribatti, 2013). Small building

blocks (microtissues) are prepared and, subsequently, larger-scale con-

structs (macrotissues) can be obtained by directed assembling the building

blocks. Directed assembly of the microtissues in the desired con guration

could ...