Some pilot clinical trials show this has promise to treat chronic pain and diseases. Tissue engineering integrates the sciences of biomaterials, cell biology, biochemistry, biomedical engineering and transplantation to create tissue and organ substitutes. Starting with a few human cells, tissue engineers simulate the environments that allow cells to develop into viable tissue. The specific procedure varies by company, but it generally involves seeding the selected cells onto some type of matrix, where they are then are provided with, or begin to excrete, the proteins and growth factors necessary for them to grow and multiply. The primary motivation behind tissue engineering is the ongoing, dire need for available, safe and transplantable organs and tissues.
Tissue engineering has the potential to redefine tissue and organ repair and replacement.
The future holds endless possibilities. We have successfully grown not only cartilage, bone and skin but urinary tract and liver tissue. In late July a researcher from Harvard University, Dario Fauza, described how he and Harvard Medical School surgeon Anthony Atala had collaborated to grow replacement sections of organs from the tissue of prenatal lambs. At the conference of the British Association for Pediatric Surgeons, Fauza explained how cells harvested from the lambs were cultured on a polymer scaffolding that assumed the shape of a section of bladder. At birth, the lambs, which had surgically induced bladder malformations, received the contoured replacement bladder tissue.