Regenerative Medicine, the Induction of Bone Formation, Bone Tissue Engineering, and the Osteogenic Proteins of the Transforming Growth Factor-β Supergene Family

Regenerative medicine is the grand multidisciplinary challenge of molecular, cellular, and evolutionary biology, requiring the integration of molecular and tissue biology, tissue engineering, developmental biology, and experimental surgery to explore how to trigger de novo induction of tissues and organs of the mammalian body, with the ultimate goal of inducing de novo and ex novo tissues and organs in man (Sampath and Reddi 1981, 1983; Khouri et al. 1991; Reddi 1994, 2000; Viola et al. 2003).