ABSTRACT
Langer and Vacanti dened and summarized the term, tissue engineering, as “an interdisciplinary eld that applies the principles of engineering and life sciences toward the development of biological substitutes for the repair or regeneration of tissue or organ functions” in National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored meetings in 1988 and 1993.1 Until now, the eld of tissue engineering has been playing intrinsic and potential roles in replacing or restoring physiological functions of diseased and/or damaged organs. Products of tissue engineering can be of two types: one is a completely functional ex vivo developed organ to be implanted and the other is a combination of scaffold with cells that becomes functional tissue/organ after implantation.2 In either of the types of tissue-engineered products, cells are the potential component for the treatment of diseased tissues where it plays signicant roles such as proliferation, differentiation, cellular signaling, development of extracellular matrix, and most importantly, protein production.3 There have been several tissues such as skin, blood vessels, bone, cartilage, kidney, and heart,4 developed based on tissue engineering techniques and utilized for tissue regeneration that proves the success of tissue engineers.
