ABSTRACT
Reconstruction of large craniofacial defects in humans remains a grand challenge for skeletal reconstructionists, tissue engineers, and molecular biologist alike. In context, mandibular reconstruction has been and still is a challenging endeavor, despite major biological and experimental surgical advances that have hitherto resulted in the rapid generation of novel molecular and biological data that have engineered the emergence of
tissue biology and, with it, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine at large (Sampath and Reddi 1981; Reddi 1994, 2000; Ripamonti 2006; Ripamonti et al. 2004, 2014a).
