ABSTRACT
The decit in organ and tissue donation is a signicant unmet healthcare need worldwide. In the United States itself, the organ waiting lists have swelled disproportionately in comparison to the increase in the number of transplants (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015). Due to the acute shortage of donor organs, many die while on the waiting list. Currently, typical treatments for replacement of damaged or lost tissue are the use of autografts and allografts (Dlaska et al., 2015). Whereas these two options perform fairly well, allografts carry the risk of infections, and autografts have issues with availability and donor morbidity. To supplant these approaches, the eld of biomaterials has explored alternative materials and methods to repair damaged or diseased tissue (Ratner et al., 2013). Advances in chemistry have enabled the use of metals, ceramics, and polymers, which can be tailored for specic mechanical, biological, and chemical properties; however, these options still have problems associated with foreign body response and imperfect integration into the body. These challenges associated with rst-generation biomaterials have led to the generation of intelligent or stealth biomaterials that are not easily detected by the bodies’ immune system or isolated by brous capsules. Notwithstanding these advances in biomaterials, we have still not been able to provide seamless tissue and organ replacement to effectively meet the outstanding worldwide demand. Toward that end, tissue engineering started about 30 years ago as an alternative approach to achieve
CONTENTS
1.1 Introduction and Background .............................................................................................3 1.2 Tissue Engineering ................................................................................................................5 1.3 Regenerative Engineering ....................................................................................................5
