Glycans and hybrid glyco-materials for artificial cell microenvironment fabrication

Cell microenvironments are able to induce cell fate, resulting in tissue regeneration or in pathological events. The development of artificial ECMs, the main component of cell microenvironments, provides invaluable tools in regenerative medicine. Glycans are indispensable components of ECMs, to which they provide not only structural and mechanical properties, but also biological signals. In this chapter we describe the strategies to generate artificial 3D ECMs, exploiting both glycans and proteins, modulating the structure, morphology and signalling content able to induce specific cell fates. The functionalization approaches to conjugate biomaterials with glycidic cues and to crosslink polysaccharide to proteins or synthetic polymers are described. The role of glycans to induce specific cell fate is analysed in the relatively few examples reported in the literature.