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Magill’s Medical Guide, 9th Edition

Tissue engineering

by Richard P. Capriccioso, MD

Category: Biology

Anatomy or system affected: All systems, tissues, and organs

Specialties and related fields: Cardiology, dermatology, gastroenterology, orthopedics, pulmonology, surgery, urology

Definition: An integrative technology that combines cells, tissue culture protocols, synthetic scaffolds, and engineering technologies to establish suitable biochemical and physiological conditions to grow tissues and organs under artificial conditions to improve or replace dead or dying tissues and organs.

Key terms:

biodegradability: the artificial scaffold used to support the growth of bioengineered tissue should dissolve once the transplanted tissue takes hold.

biological Scaffold: made of polyester (plastic), collagen (protein), or other sources, is used as a structural framework for tissue engineering.

biomaterials: replacements for body tissues, sometimes used as implants. Examples are engineered skin tissue, renal tissue, or cardiac implants. Biomaterials can be made of metal alloys, plastic polymers, and living tissues like collagen.

biomechanical considerations: environmental (space) considerations conducive for cellular growth and development. When combined with a biological scaffold and a blend of growth factors, effective tissue engineering may occur.

immune rejection: natural antibody response to foreign transplanted tissue. Tissues engineered from the patient’s own cells will not have this type of rejection.

pluripotentstem cells: Stem cells that can differentiate into any adult cell type.

regenerative medicine: Another term for tissue engineering, where biological properties are employed to maintain, repair, replace or enhance tissue function.

INDICATIONS AND PROCEDURES

Cells are the basic units of biological life. When molecular, chemical, and electrical signals organize cells into functional groups, they become tissues. If tissues are damaged or nonfunctional, tissue engineers can apply the biological principles of tissue growth and development to produce replacement tissues. Tissue engineering, sometimes referred to as regenerative medicine, employs biological principles to repair, maintain, enhance or replace tissue function.

Tissue engineers come from many science-related fields, applying life science and engineering principles to develop functional bioactive tissues that can be restorative. Biologists, scientists, and biomedical engineers can engineer tissue repair or produce new tissue if cellular responses to various extracellular and intercellular signals are comprehensively detailed, and the biochemical properties involved with these events are understood. Effective understanding begins with proper intercellular communication from cells, tissues, and their surrounding environments. This communication and organization by groups of cells develop support structures that provide a matrix or scaffold.

A building scaffold is used to support materials and work crews that aid in the construction, repair, or maintenance of structures like bridges or buildings. A biological scaffold, made of plastic (polyester), protein, or other sources, is used for tissue engineering. Tissue development can occur with an environment conducive for growth and development, a blend of growth factors, and a biological scaffold.

Biological scaffolds can be used for tissue engineering by stripping cells away from donor organs, leaving a collagen (protein) scaffold. Kidney, liver, lung, and heart tissue have been bioengineered using these types of collagen scaffolds. A scaffold using human tissue or organs harvested from surgical techniques combined with an individual’s cells could create bioengineered tissues or organs resistant to immunological rejection.

An important biological scaffolding characteristic is biodegradability—meaning, the scaffold should dissolve once the transplanted tissues take hold. This concept of dissolving after ten days or two weeks in the body has been used in medicine when stitching with bioresorbable sutures for many decades. While cells fabricate a natural structural matrix, the engineered extracellular matrix (scaffold) provides structural integrity. The degradation rate of the scaffold must coincide with the tissue formation rate. Surgical removal of the scaffold (often plastic or collagen) is not necessary if it dissolves after the cells produce their own supportive scaffolding which can manage mechanical forces at play in the biological setting.

Transplantable human tissue built on a biodegradable scaffold can help with organ transplantation. Transplanted tissue must sustain an attack by the immune system to avoid rejection of the foreign cells. Cells stripped from a kidney and functioning renal tissue bioengineered from the tissue scaffold created in this process have shown the promise of producing functioning organs/tissues created from the patient’s cells, solving or minimizing immune rejection.

USES AND COMPLICATIONS

Although bioengineered tracheas, cartilage, skin grafts, bladders, and arteries have been implanted in humans, these procedures are in the experimental stage. Experimental protocols, personnel, laboratory, and health related costs are expensive. Organ tissues, including liver, lung, and heart, have been laboratory created, but surgical and medical procedures for successful patient implantation of bioengineered tissue ready to effectively function in a human require much more experimentation and study. Some of these bioengineered tissues are used for research, including the development of medications and the production of biological tools for personalizing medicinal treatments. Use of bioengineered tissue can reduce the need for animals in research and lower research costs.

Modified inkjet printers have been used to produce vascular networks in bioengineered tissue. Living tissue requires the nutrients and oxygen blood provides. Bioengineered tissue on a collagen scaffold will die without nourishment. A modified inkjet printer was used to “print” a lattice network made from a sugar solution, which then hardens. Bioengineered tissue is placed over the lattice, surrounding the lines of sugar. Blood added to the tissue/sugar mesh dissolves the sugar and leaves channels that serve as blood vessels.

PERSPECTIVE AND PROSPECTS

Current research related to tissue engineering include developing new biological scaffolding materials and tools better enabling the imaging, fabrication, and preservation of engineered tissues.

Stem cells have the potential to develop (differentiate) into a variety of cell types. Growing stem cells having the ability to develop into any cell type (known as pluripotent stem cells) is an important part of current tissue engineering research. Pluripotent stem cells have been bioengineered from stem cell to bone grafts that have potential human use.

Research using various combinations of growth factors has recently been supplemented by employing biomechanical elements, like different types of defined three-dimensional spaces, to help decipher how stem cells differentiate into distinct cell types. Subjecting growing stem cells to new spatial arrangements in addition to novel culture conditions, surfaces, and combinations of growth factors, influences the differentiation programs of pluripotent and adult stem cells. The creative uses of three-dimensional culture systems also expands the number of cell types into which these stem cell populations can differentiate and increases the efficiency of their differentiation. Innovative approaches like the use of different spaces in addition to growth solutions can potentially help decipher the genetic, chemical, and structural factors related to tissue development and repair.

For Further Information:

1 

Capriccioso, Richard P. and Capriccioso, Christina E., Bionics and biomedical engineering. Applied Science 2011, pp 228-233. Salem Press, Pasadena CA.

2 

Fountain, Henry. A First: Organs Tailor-Made with Body’s Own Cells. The New York Times. 15 Sept. 2012. www.nytimes. com/2012/09/16/health/research/scientists-make-progress-i n-tailor-made-organs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0}

3 

Karcher, Susan J., Human Genetic Engineering, Salem Science: Applied Sciences 2011. Salem Press, Pasadena.

4 

National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. NIH US Department of Health and Human Services www.nibib.nih.govTissue engineering and regenerative medicine.www.nibib.nih.gov/science-education/science-topics/tissue-engineering-and-regenerative-medicine

5 

Nerem, R.M.; Vacanti, Joseph; Lanza, R. P.; Langer, Robert S., eds. Principles of tissue engineering (4th ed.). 2013. Boston: Academic Press. eBook ISBN: 9780123983701. Hardcover ISBN: 9780123983589

6 

Stem Cell Information, stemcells.nih.gov

7 

Vacanti, Joseph P., ed. Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine 2017. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. 2cshl press.com/default.tpl?action=full&src=pdf&—eqskudatarq=1157. ISBN 978-1-621821-28-1

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Capriccioso, Richard P. "Tissue Engineering." Magill’s Medical Guide, 9th Edition, edited by Anubhav Agarwal,, Salem Press, 2022. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=MMG2022_1369.
APA 7th
Capriccioso, R. P. (2022). Tissue engineering. In A. Agarwal, (Ed.), Magill’s Medical Guide, 9th Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Capriccioso, Richard P. "Tissue Engineering." Edited by Anubhav Agarwal,. Magill’s Medical Guide, 9th Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2022. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.