Now you know...

Regenerative medicine holds the realistic promise of regenerating damaged tissues and organs in vivo (in the living body) through techniques that stimulate previously irreparable organs into healing themselves. It also empowers scientists to grow tissues and organs in vitro (in the laboratory) and safely implant them in vivo when the body is unable to be prompted into healing itself.

One of the earliest methods of regenerative medicine, via tissue engineering, involved seeding a biodegradable scaffold with cells of a particular tissue type. Bone cells, for example, which were implanted in the scaffold, and stimulated to replicate and expand until they assumed the shape and properties of the bone they were to replace.

---

While this remains a viable strategy for growing certain types of replacement tissues ex vivo (outside the body) for later implantation, over the past two decades scientific understanding has increased, and additional approaches have been developed with proven benefits. In recent years scientists have focused on perfecting regenerative techniques that allow for more of the tissue growth and regeneration to occur directly inside the body — as opposed to growing it outside the body for later implantation.

Generally speaking, all regenerative therapies continue to employ some combination of scaffold, cell population and regulatory molecules for the creation of new tissue.


Depending upon the tissue or organ system involved, one of the following therapeutic approaches will dominate, but typically a combination of two or more are required.

• Cell-based tissue regeneration, often referred to as cellular therapy, seeks to repair damaged and diseased tissues by transplanting healthy new cells to the affected site. 
• Scaffold-guided tissue regeneration involves seeding a porous biodegradable scaffold with donor cells and/or growth factors, then culturing and implanting the scaffold to induce and direct the growth of new tissue. The goal is for the cells to attach to the scaffold, replicate and ultimately grow into healthy, functioning tissue as the scaffold degrades.
• Bioactive Molecule-based tissue regeneration utilizes regulatory molecules, also known as growth factors, to induce and direct cell growth and differentiation.

Collectively, these therapies allow for two substantial advances over current therapies: The first advance is the potential to regenerate tissue in vivo (in the living body), which accelerates the process of tissue replacement. The second advance is the ability to produce tissues in vitro (in the laboratory) to be used for transplantation purpose when in vivo regeneration is not possible.