ABSTRACT
According to the classical defi nition tissue-engineering is an interdisciplinary fi eld that applies and combines the principles of engineering and life sciences toward the development of biological substitutes that restore, maintain, or improve tissue function or a whole organ (Langer and Vacanti 1993). Today, the goals of tissue engineering (Lanza et al. 2007) also include the regeneration or replacement of defective, diseased or missing tissues and organs. Thus tissue engineering increasingly relies on input from developmental biology while providing output for regenerative medicine. Numerous techniques have been proposed to reach the above-stated goals, but every tissue engineering approach is based on three fundamental pillars: cell source, construct (i.e., tissue or organ) formation and construct maturation.
