Tissue Engineering Approaches

There are three major approaches to tissue engineering which are:

• Conduction
• Induction
• Cell Transplantation

In conduction, the biomaterials degrade as tissue is being formed. As the biomaterials degrade, they take up the shape of the host and create a custom fitting barrier. These custom fitting barrier keeps some cells out but allow the cells that will repair the defect in.  Example of this can be seen in atrisob.

Induction is done by bioactive factors. The bioactive factors attract certain cells to migrate to the defect site and also control their behaviour. After migration to the defect site, receptors are used to alert cells to repair defect. They are made up of poly-lactic-co-glycolic acid and provide instructive signals to host cells.

In cell transplantation, you take a biopsy from a patient and you isolate cells from that piece of tissue by breaking down the ECM that surrounds the cell. Outside of the body in the cell culture, we are able to grow and expand the cell. Then we inject or implant directly into a patient or seeded into a polymer biomaterial scaffold. A combination of the cell and scaffold can be implanted into the body at the defect site or the cell scaffold construct can be cultured in a bioreactor outside of the body. A bioreactor is an environment with a very controlled condition.

References

• Introduction to Tissue Engineering by Dr. Eben Alsberg.