ABSTRACT
Humanity hopes for a better future in clinical therapeutics where one wishes to overcome challenges such as long and painful wait for right donor for organ transplant, problems in plastic surgery, impaired wound healing and dysfunctional operations, and debilitating genetic disorders. Tissue engineering is still at baby steps as it deliberates to combine principles of engineering and life sciences to give people hope. This technique aims to repair, restore, and regenerate damaged and diseased cells and organs of the human body. Among many approaches that are employed alongside, “gene therapy” holds great prospects for future clinical therapeutics as it can be effortlessly united with tissue engineering and can repair the damaged tissue at the cellular and molecular level. This hybrid approach of conjunction between tissue engineering and gene therapy provides the optimum environment for therapeutic protein expression for regeneration of cells and tissues, thereby holds immense potential in areas of skin, bone, and cartilage repair. The aim of this chapter is to provide the readers with the varied aspects of tissue engineering and gene therapy, their advantages and future prospects as well as the challenges pertaining to the combination of the two.
