Covalent growth factor immobilization strategies for tissue repair and regeneration

Growth factors play a critical role in regulating processes involved in cellular differentiation and tissue regeneration, and are therefore considered essential elements in many tissue engineering strategies. The covalent immobilization of growth factors to biomaterial matrices addresses many of the challenges associated with delivering freely-diffusible growth factors and has thus emerged as a promising method of achieving localized and sustained growth factor delivery. This Feature Article discusses methods that have been used to immobilize growth factors to substrates, followed by an overview of several tissue repair and regeneration applications in which immobilized growth factors have been used.