Tissue Engineering By Michael DaSilva

Tissue Engineering Tissue engineering is the field of biomedical engineering that’s goal is to create new cells that helps heal organs and if need be, to create an entirely new organ. The main point of tissue engineering is to make it easier basically reproduce organs in order to make people’s lives better.

How it works There are three basic steps in tissue engineering. The first step is actually getting the base cells to work with. The second step is putting the altered cells into a scaffold in order to incubate the cells. The final step is to put the newly created cells or organ into use.

Step 1- Creating the Materials The materials that are used for tissue engineering are actually living cells that were taken from somewhere else. These cells are then modified to whatever kind of cell is needed. There are 7 sources from where you can get these cells.

7 Sources of Cells Autologous- Come from the person that needs the new cells. Allogenic- Come from a body from the same species. Xenogenic- Come from a different species then the organism they’re going into. Syngenic- Come from genetically identical epople. (Twins) Primary- Come from any organism. Secondary- Come from a cell bank. Stem cells- Undifferentiated cells.

Step 2-Bioreactors and Scaffolds Bioreactors are used in an attempt to recreate realistic physiological environments so that the cells can grow in a natural manner. Once the cells are obtained, they are then put into a scaffold to let the cells grow into their new forms. The original problem with creating new organs was that they would die before they could get placed into the organism that needed them. This problem has been solved with the recent developments in 3D printers, which allows for blood vessels to be put into the new organ.

8 Types of Scaffolds Nanofiber Self-Assembly Textiles Solvent Casting & Particulate Leaching Gas Foaming Emulsification/Freeze-drying Thermally Induced Phase Separation Electrospinning CAD/CAM

Step 3- Usage This step obviously is when the newly created cells are put into use. Whether they are being used to create a new organ via the 3D Organ Printer, or they are being used as new skin.

Future I see tissue engineering as a very promising field in Biomedical engineering. It can solve many of the problems that people experience today. It will eventually continue to grow and become and make the need for a donor list obsolete as they will be able to just grow organs specifically for people.