Tissue engineering tackles its most formidable challenge - mimicking nature.
By GORDANA VUNJAK-NOVAKOVIC
The possibility that we might engineer replacements for worn out tissues - from the simple slips of cartilage that cushion joints to fully differentiated, functional grafts in a ready-to-use format - is increasingly plausible. The need is obvious. With advances in medicine, we are outliving the functional life of our organs. Roughly one in five people reaching the age of 65 will benefit from some kind of tissue replacement or transplant in their lifetime,1 but due to poor availability, many will not. While visions of a healthy, shrink-wrapped heart ready to drop in the
chest cavity of a needy patient are pure fantasy for now, tissue engineering is remarkably close to producing biological grafts that can reestablish normal tissue structure and function across different size scales, on a long term, and with the ability to remodel in ...
