Emerging biotechnological approaches with respect to tissue regeneration: from improving biomaterial incorporation to comprehensive omics monitoring

In the last two decades the development of biomaterials has demonstrated an unprecedented progress which has been emphasized by the introduction of a significant number of innovative materials. As such, the advent of biomaterials represents a formidable opportunity for the implementation of therapeutic treatments, able to induce tissue or organ regeneration. Meanwhile, the further understanding of complex biological mechanisms and the improvement of the production of biological (macro)-molecules using state-of-the-art biotechnologies have also experienced some major breakthroughs. These progresses have led to their wide adoption for therapeutic purposes. Indeed, different types of proteins, such as monoclonal antibodies or fusion proteins, are currently approved for therapeutic use and the first biopharmaceutical product based on siRNA has been approved by the FDA on the third semester of 2018. As a consequence, recent research articles describe the incorporation of biomolecules to the structure of biomaterials in order, for instance, to deliver locally biological agents capable of favoring the regeneration of the tissue or to promote the integration of the biomaterial within the host. The incorporation of biomolecules to the material requires a dedicated characterization, based on state-of-the-art analytical techniques, such as mass spectrometry (MS), in order to assess the impact on the structure of the biomolecule and ensure the preservation of the biological activity. From another aspect the implantation of foreign material to a living organism involves some major biological consequences that are not completely understood at the moment. The maturation of different -omics research fields, with genomics and proteomics as flagships, has recently offered the possibility to monitor the faint and complex changes involved by the implantation of biomaterials for tissue regeneration. Thus these advanced analytical workflows should provide crucial information regarding the outcome of biomaterial potentially easing the research and development process. The following chapter focuses on the cutting-edge analytical methodologies which can be implemented to investigate the outcome of biomaterial implantation for tissue from these perspectives. The first part intends to provide an extended description of the proteomics analytical workflow which allows to identify and monitor the expression levels of proteins on a large scale in complex biological samples. The second part aims to present the methodologies based on MS used to perform detailed structural characterization of proteins which can be used to ensure the structural integrity of protein integrated to material consequently to their release.