Tissue Engineering and Stem Cells

Kim, Byung Soo

Abstract

Fabricating human organs with tissue engineering and stem cells may be an alternative to current suboptimal therapies for treatment of malfunction or loss of human tissues or organs. From the tissue engineering's perspective, the patients are expected to be treated with new tissues or organs reconstructed with transplanted cells. The cells for tissue engineering could be somatic cells derived from the patients themselves, other individuals, or animals. Another valuable cell source would be stem cells. Embryonic stem cells retain the pluripotency to differentiate into every cell type of human organs, but ethical issues remain to be addressed. Adult stem cells may solve these ethical issues and immune rejection, but have limitation in differentiation into all ranges of tissue-specific cell types. Tissue engineering typically employs scaffolds fabricated from synthetic or natural biomaterials to engineer a new functional tissue from cells. The configuration of the biomaterials guides the structure of a regenerated tissue by defining a three-dimensional space. Appropriate combination of tissue engineering with stem cells shows a promise to fabricate human organs or tissues that can be utilized for patients in the near future.