ABSTRACT
Synthetic materials such as metals, ceramics, and polymers are widely used in the medical devices. However, it is a desire of designers to design and develop intermediate treatments that are more “natural,” which has ushered “tissue engineering” into the biomedical eld. Tissue engineering,* as a discipline, is “an interdisciplinary eld that applies the principles of engineering and life sciences toward the development of biological substitutes that restore, maintain, or improve tissue or organ function.” The objective of the eld is the use of a combination of cells, engineering and materials methods, and biochemical and physiochemical factors to improve or replace biological functions. Most tissueengineering applications involve the repair or replacement of portions of or whole tissues, such as bone, cartilage, blood vessels, bladder, skin, and so on. These tissue-engineered devices are required to meet certain mechanical and structural property specications for proper functioning. Other terms have been used synonymously with tissue engineering, such as regenerative medicine or engineering, or genetic engineering. However, there are some subtle but distinct differences between these terms. For example, regenerative medicine places more emphasis on the use of stem cells to produce tissues. Also differentiated, genetic engineering involves altering the genetic makeup of an organism by removing DNA material or by introducing DNA prepared outside the organism either directly into the host or into a cell that is then fused or hybridized with the host.
