DID YOU KNOW?

On the organ transplant list, 20 people die each day waiting for an organ.

What is Tissue Engineering?

"The human body is made up of 37.2 trillion cells." Every one of these cells makes up different types of tissues, like brain, heart, and stomach. And in turn, these tissues make up important organs, like the brain. However, what happens if these tissues are damaged? What can a person do to repair them?

They can turn to tissue engineering. Tissue engineering (also called regenerative medicine) is a scientific field where the combination of cells, growth factors, and a scaffold can create tissue. The goal of tissue engineering is to use these "artificial tissues" to repair natural tissue.

"The term 'tissue engineering' was introduced in 1987 during a meeting of the National Science Foundation." At the time, the definition was different from what it means today. But over time, 'tissue engineering' came to include many things, like stem cells and artificial organs.

A video explaining tissue engineering

(H.1, H.2, H.7)

(V.1)

How Is Tissue Engineering Used?

The ability to grow tissue can accomplish many things and solve many problems. Here are some of the things that tissue engineering is used to do:

Creating Tissues and Organs: Some of the tissues and organs that scientists have created include skin, cartilage, bone, and even bladders. By creating tissues and organs, scientists can help the people that need them the most.
Reconstructive Surgeries: The amount of tissue needed for reconstructive surgeries for burn and acid victims is a large amount. Simply getting it from donors and the patient themselves won't be able to reach that amount. However, if scientists could create unlimited amounts of tissue, doctors and surgeons could treat people suffering from horrible injuries without worrying about running out of the tissue.
The Organ Transplant List: The organ transplant list is incredibly problematic. It is incredibly long, and many people die before getting a new organ. Tissue engineering offers a solution to this problem. By creating organs, doctors can get them to people who need them the most. This gets more people off the list and fewer people die before getting the organs that they desperately need.

(H.3, H.4, H.5)

Why Is Tissue Engineering Important?

(H.8)

Though tissue engineering can accomplish the things mentioned above, it can also accomplish much more. Though these are basic and come with any scientific field, it matters to the people whose lives were saved by this field, such as Luke Massella (pictured right). Some of these things include:

Saving lives
Helping people overcome diseases and illnesses
Prolonging and improving lives

As a child, Luke suffered from spina bifida. Thanks to Dr. Atala, Luke got an engineered bladder and lives a happy life as a normal adult.

(I.4)

What are Some Challenges that Scientists Face?

Although tissue engineering has much promise, scientists still face many challenges, such as:

Limited Tissue Regeneration: Though much advancement has been made in the field since the 1980s, there are very few tissue types that actually work. Though progress has been made to grow different tissues such as heart, the intricateness of the heart tissue has made it difficult for scientists to perfect the process. For now, scientists have only engineered bone, skin, and cartilage.
Cell Sources: Cells are difficult to get from patients who are either old or suffering from a disease. In case of this, scientists grow new cells. However, this process is very time-consuming.
Scaffolds: Scaffolds have many requirements in order to function. Some of them include correct pore size, a slow degradation process, etc. These many requirements can make it difficult to create scaffolds quickly.

Even though these challenges are slowing down scientists, the future of tissue engineering looks bright. With more time, tissue engineering can be used to solve many problems such as the organ transplant list, helping burn and acid victims, and using tissues to test out new drugs and experiment with cures for diseases such as cancer.