Tissue Engineering By Michael Da Silva Tissue Engineering

Tissue Engineering By Michael Da. Silva

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 3 D 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/Freezedrying • 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 3 D 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.