Multiphoton microscopy in tissue engineering applications

What is it about?

Tissue engineering (TE) is a set of techniques allowing researchers to develop artificial tissues (eg bone, skin) by seeding cells on/in suitable biomaterial scaffolds followed by their maturation requiring growth factors and dynamic culture in bioreactors. To monitor the constructs during culture only multiphoton microscopy (MPM) has the power to both resolve subcellular structures and certain ECM components and image at increased depths with low bleaching. The review introduces to MPM in TE.

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Why is it important?

MPM is a powerful technique which solves a large number of imaging problems research suffered from in the past. The technique enables all fluorescence imaging applications, but adds fundamental and exciting new possibilities to them. Even structures with low immunogenicity, ECM components (collagen-I, elastin) and interfaces (e.g. membrane systems) are accessible in 3D, label-free. MPM allows new insights into biological processes and will speed up both the TE and medical diagnostics progress.