ABSTRACT
Tissue engineering can be defined as the application of biological, chemical, and engineering principles toward the repair, restoration or regeneration of tissues using cells, factors, and biomaterials alone or in combination [7]. The classic paradigm for in vitro tissue engineering of bone involves the isolation and culture of donor osteoblasts or osteoprogenitor cells within threedimensional (3D) biomaterials as scaffolds under conditions that support tissue growth of new bone. By combining appropriately engineered biomaterials, cells, and cell culture conditions, strategies may ultimately be found to produce synthetic bone grafts capable of providing bony repair [7,8]. Biodegradable scaffolds play a crucial role in the TE approach [2,5,9-16]. During regeneration, the biodegradable scaffold provides structural and mechanical support to the damaged tissues, degrades in a controlled manner into biocompatible by-products, and presents an interconnected porous structure to accommodate cell infiltration and vascularization, and promote extracellular matrix (ECM) synthesis [8,17,18]. Additionally, the delivery of donor osteoblasts or progenitor populations on the scaffold contributes to the tissue formation capacity, and addition of growth factors will provide added benefit to accelerate cell differentiation. The regeneration efficacy of a 3D scaffold is largely dependent on its nature, composition, topography and structural properties.Biocompatible materials, including biodegradable polymers and composites have been fabricated using various techniques into 3D scaffolds that mimic the architecture of natural ECM and have inductive capacity to modulate the regenerative process [19]. The intersection of advanced biomaterials engineering, advances in stem cell science and developmental biology over the past 10 years
has led to the emergence of a new field “Regenerative Engineering,” defined as “the integration of tissue engineering with advanced materials science, stem cell science and developmental biology toward the regeneration of complex tissues, organs, or organ systems” (Fig. 13.1) [20,21]. Regenerative engineering has elements of tissue engineering but is distinct in recognizing the robust new technologies that have come to the fore in the design of solutions for the regeneration of tissues.
