Tissue Engineering (or the newer term Regenerative Medicine) uses cells, soluble and matrix bound factors and supporting structures to regenerate damaged tissue/organ structures and function. Critical issues to tissue engineering a heart include providing a vasculature or an equivalent means of delivering nutrients to thick sections of tissue, and growing functional cardiomyocytes (perhaps from stem cells) with normal electrical conduction pathways. To grow a heart all the components must be built as well so that the spin-off benefits of growing hearts - patches, valves and vessels, etc - may be even more valuable than the heart itself and it is these that will have most impact on aging.
One ultimate goal is to address the problem of organ failure by
creating an unlimited supply of organs and complex tissues for the
purpose of transplantation and organ repair. With an unlimited supply
of vital organs, replacing a damaged or failed organ becomes not
substantially different than any medical device. To realise this
vision, we have proposed national and international collaborative
efforts (e.g. the LIFE initiative) to focus on the three R's of
regenerative medicine: replace, repair or regenerate.
Key words:
tissue engineering, organs, angiogenesis
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