Tissue Engineering

Tissue engineering (TE) is defined as "an interdisciplinary discipline in which engineering and life science concepts are used for the production of biological substitutes that restore, maintain, or improve tissue function." The goal of TE is to trigger tissue-specific regeneration mechanisms, overcoming the well-known difficulties of organ transplantation (i.e., donor shortage, need of immunosuppressive therapy). TE approaches have recently been proposed for the development of reliable in vitro models of healthy or pathological tissues and organs, which can be used for drug screening and the evaluation of new therapies, as well as the study of the complex phenomena that regulate disease onset and progression. These models have some advantages in terms of ethical and economic issues, in addition to their tremendous scientific potential. Tissue engineering combines biological elements like cells and growth factors with engineering concepts and synthetic materials to create a new tissue. Human cells are seeded onto scaffolds, which can be made of collagen or a biodegradable polymer, to create substitute tissues.