Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine

Tissue engineering/regenerative medicine (TERM) is a multidisciplinary field applying regenerative biological substitutes to repair, maintain or replace part of or whole tissue and its function. Cells and scaffolds are two factors which plays important role in tissue engineering. Stem cells are the original cells which have a potential ability to proliferate and differentiate into all kind of tissue or organs under the certain signals, therefore, they have a wide usage on tissue engineering. Scaffolds provide a three-dimensional (3-D) structure for cell differentiation into a tissue or organ. The different scaffolds need different materials, and also need different methods for preparation. In this paper, abundant representative papers on tissue engineering were reviewed and research progress was summarized: (1) cells, including progress on pluripotent stem cells, (2) diverse scaffolds and their preparation, evaluation and applications, including the advantages and disadvantages of different scaffolds and methods for preparation. Based on review, the possible direction of field was discussed finally.