Small Intestinal Submucosa (SIS): A Biomaterial Conducive to Smart Tissue Remodeling

Abstract

Tissue Engineering has been defined as “the application of the principles and methods of engineering and life sciences toward the fundamental understanding of structure-function relationships in normal and pathological mammalian tissues, and the development of biological substitutes to restore tissues” (Skalak and Fox, 1988). This discipline involves structure-function relationships at the molecular, intracellular, intercellular, tissue and whole organ levels and attempts to bridge the gap between studies at the cell level and those at the tissue-organ level (Heineken and Skalak, 1991). The studies described below were targeted at the whole tissue response and somewhat less at the individual cell level. This manuscript describes the findings from a series of in-vivo studies in which a novel biomaterial derived from the small intestinal submucosa contributed to the remodeling of a variety of tissues. A definitive explanation for the results of these studies is not possible with our current understanding of the regulation of tis sue remodeling; however, speculation for some of the structure-function observations is presented. This material was presented at the Tissue Engineering Symposium in Keystone, Colorado in April, 1992.