Tissue engineering of skin

摘要

Tissue engineering (TE) and regenerative medicine are a blend of developmental biology, life sciences, and engineering efforts that attempts to address clinical problems. Tissue engineering was defined in 1988 as the application of principles and methods of engineering and life sciences toward fundamental understanding of structure-function relationships in normal and pathological mammalian tissues and the development of biologic substitutes to restore, maintain, or improve tissue function (Fig. 1). It has been studied and applied to various organs with the potential for decreasing the need for organ transplantation. The themes of current and future molecular efforts involve coalescing approaches to recapitulate normal development in clinical scenarios where skin reconstruction is needed. An increased understanding of stem cells, scaffolding, and signaling with extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions will make this tissue-engineered future possible.