ABSTRACT
The term Tissue Engineering was coined at the National Science Foundation in the late 1980s, and since then the notes of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine started reverberating in the entire world. It is unfolding as a signicant potential alternative to address tissue and organ failure by implanting synthetic, natural, or semisynthetic tissue that are fully functional and mimic the native structure. The general approach of tissue engineering is to use biomaterials as temporary scaffolds to support and direct the growth of cells to form new tissue. However, in order to engineer complex tissues, observation of the smallest cues present in a cell’s microenvironment and the extracellular matrix (ECM) is required (Atala et al., 2012).
