Cell and tissue engineering
Tissue engineering, one of the most exciting and rapidly growing areas in biomedical engineering, offers vast potential for changing traditional approaches to meeting many critical health care needs.
One of the most exciting and rapidly growing areas in biomedical engineering, tissue engineering offers vast potential for changing traditional approaches to clinical treatment. And because so many tissues and organs are strong candidates for engineering reconstruction—including bone, cartilage, liver, pancreas, skin, blood vessel, and peripheral nerve—tissue engineering can help meet critical health care needs related to tissue and organ replacement. Tissue engineering systems also are being used as model systems to study cell behavior.
Tissue engineering uses biomaterials and cells to produce new tissues. Stem cells have infused great excitement in the field as a potentially powerful cell source to rebuild tissues. Significant research focuses on understanding and harnessing the power of stem cells and on developing new biomaterials to guide cell behavior.
Scientists must address many challenges before tissue engineering therapies reach clinical use and widespread application. Research in the Department of Biomedical Engineering ranges from fundamental studies to determine a cell’s response to its environment to developing applied technologies, including microfabrication, polymer and biomaterial synthesis, and drug and gene delivery.
Included in Cell and Tissue Engineering Research
- Developing new biosynthetic materials that can guide tissue growth in complex in vivo environments.
- Applying adult and embryonic cells to generate new tissues.
- Characterizing cardiac cells derived from embryonic stem cells and their use for cell-based therapy of dysfunctional cardiac tissue.
- Using the latest technologies to create novel biomaterial scaffolds.
- Studying the relationship between cell behavior and the physical environment.
- Targeting anti-cancer drugs and diagnostic agents to engineered cell surfaces and constructing artificial viral receptors on human cells for gene therapy.
- Applying tissue engineering to the study of diseases, such as osteoarthritis, Aperts Syndrome, and HIBM, a degenerative muscle disorder.
- Using biomaterials as a means for time-controlled and tissue-specific drug delivery.
- Using physical cues for in situ manipulation of endogenous stem cells and tissue regeneration.
