Research on tissue engineering has been actuated for want of improved treatments and has now come out as a likely alternative to organ transplantation. The two indispensable components for regeneration of tissues are cells and scaffolds. Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that have proliferative capacity and the ability to differentiate into specific mature lineages, which is called plasticity. The physical and chemical signals from the surrounding microenvironment can influence the proliferation as well as the differentiation of stem cells into more specialized cell types and thus play an important role regulating the fate of the stem cells. Over decades, scientists have revealed that the stem cells' growth and differentiation can be stimulated and regulated by scaffold properties. Silk fibroin has been used in both in vitro and in vivo tissue engineering applications and has shown promising results, particularly for bone tissue engineering applications. For successful application of stem cells in tissue engineering, directed differentiation of stem cells will have to include approaches that not only regulate cell-fate specification but also cell maturation to access a complete range of cell types and stages. One of the ways of achieving this is by modifying the surface properties of the scaffold to have control over the stem cell behavior and final product. In this spotlight on application, we recapitulate the current developments of silk-based materials and their surface modifications for patterning of cells and stem cell differentiation with a focus on bone tissue engineering.
Keywords: bone; mesenchymal stem cells; patterning; silk; stem cell differentiation; tissue engineering.