Chapter 15 | Regenerative Engineering: Fulfilling the Tissue Engineering Promise to Bone Regeneration Available to Purchase
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Published:2014
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Repair and regeneration of complex human musculoskeletal tissues such as long bones and limbs using biomaterials, cells, and/or growth factors is a great challenge for tissue engineers and orthopedic surgeons. Tissue engineering has long been considered an alternative to bone graft substitutes for bone regeneration. Recently regenerative engineering has emerged as the next stage in the evolution of tissue engineering. Regenerative engineering is an interdisciplinary field in which traditional tissue engineering converges with advanced materials science, stem cell science, and areas of developmental biology. In this chapter, we first briefiy introduce various commercially available bone grafting materials. Then we provide a state-of-the-art review on the tissue engineering approach to bone regeneration using biomaterials, cells, and growth factors. Finally, we emphasize the emergence of the field of regenerative engineering, aiming to overcome various challenges that researchers have faced in bone tissue engineering. The regenerative engineering approach to bone repair takes advantage of advances in materials science, stem cells, and developmental biology, and in our opinion represents the next era in engineering bone tissue.