ABSTRACT
Regenerative medicine is an interdisciplinary field combining knowledge of cell biology, materials science, and medicine with the aim to create constructs capable of healing or replacing lost and damaged tissue due to sickness or accidents, eliminating the need for donated tissue. For example, the effective healing of critical size bone defects, as a consequence of injury or disease, is an increasing problem in an aging population. The majority of current treatment strategies involve autografts, where bone is extracted from another part of the patient’s body, usually from the iliac crest or the fibula. Although this approach is often successful, there are issues associated with infections and hematomas due to the creation of a secondary injury at the donor site, while the amount of bone available is relatively scarce. Another approach involves using allografts; however, donated bone introduces the risk of transferring diseases between the donor and host, as well as increases the risk of infections and donor site rejection. Tissue engineering offers the possibility to avoid these problems by incorporating three-dimensional constructs, or scaffolds, with osteoinductive and osteoconductive properties to replace the auto/allograft.
