Current Issue : January-March Volume : 2018 Issue Number : 1 Articles : 1 Articles
The artificial generation of tissues, organs or even more complex living organisms was throughout the history of mankind a matter of myth and dream. During the last decades this vision became feasible and has been recently introduced in clinical medicine. Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine are terms in biomedical field that deal with the transformations. Tissue Engineering (TE) is a scientific field mainly focused on the development of tissue and organ substitutes by controlling biological, biophysical and/or biomechanical parameters in the laboratory. This results in elaboration of three-dimensional cellular constructs with properties more similar to natural tissues than classical monolayer cultures. These systems enable the in-vitro study of human physiology and physiopathology more accurately, while providing a set of biomedical tools with potential applicability in toxicology, medical devices, tissue replacement, repair and regeneration. To succeed in these purposes, TE uses nature as an inspiration source for the generation of extracellular matrix analogues (scaffolds), either from natural or synthetic origin as well as bioreactors and bio-devices to mimic natural physiological conditions of particular tissues. These scaffolds embed cells in a three dimensional milieu that display signals critical for the determination of cellular fate, in terms of proliferation, differentiation and migration, among others. The aim of this review is to analyze the state of the art of TE and some of its application fields....
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