Tissue Engineering
Due to the continously increasing insight into cellular processes scientist and physicians increasingly understand the mechanisms behind the self-healing processes of the human body. Utilizing these self-healing processes implies a vital enhancement of medicine by therapeutic options, that are commonly summarized as Regenerative Medicine.
Tissue Engineering is the attempt to generate repair tissues and organs (bioartificial tissues) using cells from an individual patient. This scientific field originally emerged as alternative therapy in the treatment of patients with terminal organ failure as a last resort to the chronic lack of donor-organs in transplant-surgery. The in cooperation of biologists, biochemists, engineers and physiscians generated bioartificial tissues have numerous advantages over other currently applied medical implants:
- No tissue rejection, since they represent autologous tissues of the very same patient.
- Regeneration potential of the implanted viable tissues in case of injury, operation or infection at a later date.
- Frowth potential of the implants when implanted in children.
The generation of these bioartificial tissues takes place in three steps:
- Firstly, patient’s (autologous) cells are obtained by a biopsy procedure. The cells are isolated from the tissue biopsy and increased in number in the cell culture laboratory outside of the human
- Secondly, the cells are transferred onto a carrier structure (matrix). This matrix can be generated from animal tissue by specific techniques or it can be generated from synthetic components. In the laboratory, the cells sprout on the matrix and start to dissolve it and replace it by private proteins – the entirely autologous bioartificial tissue originates.
- Finally, after achieving a certain stage of maturation in the laboratory, the bioartificial tissue is transplanted as replacement tissue into the patient.
Various body tissues are successfully generated by Tissue Engineering techniques and their transplantation has been realized in the clinic. Among them are joint-cartilage and skin replacements. Others, like heart-valves, blood vessels or muscle sphincters for the treatment of incontinence reside in the state of pre-clinical development and have been applied in patients sporadically. Numerous clinics currently do research on the development of bioartificial replacement tissues.