Polymeric hollow fiber membranes for bioartificial organs and tissue engineering applications

Polymeric hollow fiber (HF) membranes are commercially available, i.e. microfiltration and ultrafiltration cartridges or reverse osmosis and gas separation modules, to be applied for separation purposes in industry, for instance to recover valuable raw materials or products, or for the treatment of end-of-pipe wastes to avoid environmental impacts, to regenerate or treat waters for reuse and for the separation of key components or clarification in food and beverage industries. They have also shown important benefits as hemodialyzers, hemodiafiltration or plasma purification devices in patients with liver or kidney damage. The good mass transport properties characterizing the polymeric HFs have opened new research areas of application in the biomedical field, such as the tissue engineering (TE) and the construction of bioartificial organs (BAO). In TE, the HFs act as scaffolds or supports and/or allow high permeance of nutrients and waste removal for cell proliferation and differentiation. In BAO, HFs are used for the fabrication of bio-hybrid constructs that replace the damaged organs of the patient or can be used as in vitro models for therapeutic studies. This review presents the state-of-the-art concerning preparation and application of HFs for TE and BAO and discusses the challenges and future perspectives of the HFs in both fields