The end of the beginning for tissue engineering

For three decades we have heard about the hope of tissue engineering. Hyperbole has become routine, but amidst unreasonable expectations are serious scientists, like Paulo Macchiarini, who believe that by combining cells and degradable materials ex vivo they can develop organs to replace or repair diseased tissues. After many years of trying to build engineered tissues on a backbone of synthetic degradable polymers, a growing body of evidence suggests that decellularised whole organs and tissues are clinically effective degradable scaffolds.

View full article in the Lancet here

"Tissue engineering: Grow your own smart organs"

Robert Langer, professor in biomedical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinks one day we could grow tissues and organs from our cells, which contain sensors that can alert you when illness is about to strike.

The idea behind tissue engineering is that you take plastics, add cells to it, and if you use the right kind of plastics and the right structure and add the right media to the mix, then you have the ability to make skin, bone, or any tissue or organ in the body.

There’s been significant progress in this field, says Robert Langer.  We can already make skin for patients with burns or skin ulcers, and others like corneas and liver are in trials. Langer hopes we will be able to do this for all tissues.

Immune rejection and integration are big challenges, though.  But one day smart tissues and organs may be possible, he says.  For instance, you could put nanowires into hearts that could sense signals like oxygen levels. Some day these could even send signals to computers or monitoring devices

Click here to view full article and link to video