Tissue Engineering and Organ Regeneration

This course presents the fundamentals of tissue engineering (TE) and organ regeneration (OR). Emphasis is on clinical translation and the development of workable medical devices. Topics include factors that prevent the spontaneous regeneration of tissues/organs in the adult (following traumatic injury, surgical excision, disease, and aging), and the cellular and molecular mechanisms that can identify the agents to employ therapeutically to enable induced regeneration. A principal focus is the assessment of the criteria that need to be met by biomaterials to deliver these agents and to fill defects. The course presents the principles underlying strategies for employing select biomaterial scaffolds, exogenous cells, and soluble regulators for the formation of tissue in vitro (TE) and regeneration of tissues/organs in vivo (regenerative medicine / OR). The course describes the methodologies for producing biomaterial scaffolds to accommodate the infiltration of endogenous cells (e.g., for the treatment of stroke) and for delivering cells and regulatory molecules (e.g., for the treatment of blindness). Examples of clinical successes and failures of regenerative devices are analyzed as case studies.