Elastin is a vital component of flexible tissues, and poorly maintained in the adult body. Deterioration of elastin is an important component of the age-related structural alterations that take place in tissues such as skin and blood vessels. Elastin is also hard to obtain or manufacture for use in engineered tissues, which is the primary roadblock motivating the research noted here. While this is useful, a robust source of elastin (or as here, elastin-like proteins that suitably mimic the behavior of elastin) would probably do relatively little to enable therapies to restore elastin structures in aged tissues, as those elastin structures are complex and the configuration of elastin molecules relative to other components of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracellular_ma…
Towards Artificial Elastin for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine
Elastin is a vital component of flexible tissues, and poorly maintained in the adult body. Deterioration of elastin is an important component of the age-related structural alterations that take place in tissues such as skin and blood vessels. Elastin is also hard to obtain or manufacture for use in engineered tissues, which is the primary roadblock motivating the research noted here. While this is useful, a robust source of elastin (or as here, elastin-like proteins that suitably mimic the behavior of elastin) would probably do relatively little to enable therapies to restore elastin structures in aged tissues, as those elastin structures are complex and the configuration of elastin molecules relative to other components of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracellular_ma…