Bone tissue engineering and bioreactors

Tissue engineering (TE) is a discipline integrating biology with engineering to create tissues or cellular products outside the body (ex vivo) or to make use of gained knowledge to better manage the repair of tissues within the body (in vivo). This discipline requires understanding of different biological fields, including cell and molecular biology, physiology and systems integration, stem cell proliferation and differentiation with lineage attributes extracellular matrix chemistry and compounds, and endocrinology. It also requires knowledge of many engineering fields, including biochemical and mechanical engineering, polymer sciences, bioreactor design and application, mass transfer analysis of gas and liquid metabolites, and biomaterials. The combination of these sciences has spawned the field of regenerative medicine which has, at present, two strategic clinical aims [1]: i) Cell therapies for the repair of damaged tissues, involving injection or engraftment of cells or cellular suspensions, sometimes in combination with scaffolding material; ii) Establishment of tissue ex vivo for use as grafts or extracorporeal organs to assist or supplement ailing in vivo organs