Tissue Engineering: Future Perspectives

Tissue engineering combines the principles of materials and cell transplantation to develop substitute tissues and/or promote endogenous regeneration. The approach was initially conceived to address the critical gap between the growing number of patients on the waiting list for organ transplantation, but it will focus increasingly on prevalent conditions in which the restoration of functional tissue would answer a currently unmet medical need. Significant progress has been realized since its inception, but to date only a handful of complex products incorporating cells together with scaffolds have gained regulatory approval, and these have only achieved limited market penetration. Nonetheless, recent clinical reports with multiple years of patient follow-up document the maturation of the field and validate the development of neo-tissues and neo-organs, and the industry is rapidly becoming economically robust. The combination of advances in both clinical development and commercialization indicates that these technologies will reach increasing numbers of patients in the years to come.