Collagens as biomaterials.

This paper reviews the structure, function and applications of collagens as biomaterials. The various formats for collagens, either as tissue-based devices or as reconstituted soluble collagens are discussed. The major emphasis is on the new technologies that are emerging that will lead to new and improved collagen-based medical devices. In particular, the development of recombinant collagens, especially using microorganism systems, is allowing the development of safe and reproducible collagen products. These systems also allow for the development of novel, non-natural structures, for example collagen like structures containing repeats of key functional domains or as chimeric structures where a collagen domain is covalently linked to another biologically active component.