Investigation of cell–cell and cell–scaffold interactions through 2-D cell culture, 3-D tissue models and a simulated host system

From the onset, the discipline of tissue engineering stated the promise of providing engineered tissues or organs for clinical applications. Nevertheless, this has remained an arduous task, due to the inadequate mechanistic understanding of the rudimentary cell-cell and cell-scaffold interactions that occur during tissue regeneration. Consequently, in this thesis, a simulated host environment was established, so that the costly and controversial in-vivo models could be superseded by in-vitro techniques, which can rapidly acquire insight of the aforementioned issues. However, due to the deficient knowledge in the field, the development of the simulated host system was hindered by several inaccurate conclusions which were fundamental prior to this thesis. [Continues.]