Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine

Biomaterials and biomedical devices can be constructed of a variety of materials, and depending on the end use, incorporation of bioactive species such as drugs, enzymes, growth factors (GFs), and other molecules is possible. Until the last 25 years, a complete biological entity such as a cell was not incorporated into biomedical devices. Most of these devices were generally expected and designed to be stable, to have service lives long enough to serve as long as the host lived, except for a few cases such as resorbable sutures and short-duration implants. However, the thought of biodegradable cell–seeded devices that would completely integrate with the biological system during the healing process was very appealing because these implants were designed to blend with the tissues in the body, and this would be a cure and would not leave behind any traces after a certain period of implantation. As a result, these important advantages of this approach became a very appealing solution for many problems arising from the long-term implantation of durable materials. This new field, now called “tissue engineering,” is supported by a number of interdisciplinary fields (Fig. 19.1).