ABSTRACT
Evolution has limited the capability of adult humans to regenerate certain tissues in their fully functional form under circumstances of severe trauma and diseases. Researchers have introduced various techniques such as organ transplantation, prosthetics (artificial organs), and surgical operations to tackle the tissue damage problem. Unfortunately, the impediments associated with these techniques like immune rejection of transplants, expensive implants, and long-term surgical problems outweigh their advantages in the medical field (Castells-Sala et al., 2013). The complications associated with the above-specified techniques are circumvented by a new paradigm called “tissue engineering.” As the name suggests, tissue engineering (TE) is the application of engineering methodologies in life sciences (Horch, 2012) for developing functional tissues in vitro, which are then easily transplanted in vivo (Sengupta et al., 2014). The tissue constructs are prepared for the cells, 218which cannot regenerate naturally but have the potential to induce and sustain regeneration under laboratory and natural body conditions (Williams, 2004). This interdisciplinary field is the amalgamation of engineering, medicine, material science, molecular biology, and cell biology. The main objective of this technique is to restore, improve, and maintain the functions of tissues or organs (Horch, 2012), which are damaged and left non-functional by trauma or injuries, birth defects, and diseases like cancer. This old yet still growing field is increasing its scope in the regeneration of all types of body tissues such as nerve, skin, liver, heart, cartilage, bone, and pancreas. Apart from the medical applications, TE has widespread non-therapeutic applications, for example, (i) tissue-engineered constructs serve as in vitro model of an organ to comprehend its physiology, cellular, and molecular processes like apoptosis and carcinogenesis that can help upgrading the medical treatment methods (Nigam and Mahanta, 2014), (ii) the prepared tissue constructs are used in combination with biosensors, to detect the presence of toxic agents, and (iii) for the development of personalized drugs (Hasan, 2017).
