Introduction

Tissue engineering is meant to provide three-dimensional tissues that are functional and restore or maintain the tissues in living organisms. Tissues are made up of stem cells. These newly created tissues can help cure many illnesses or diseases. Some diseases that could be cured from tissue engineering are muscular dystrophy and heart disease. Engineers are creating new medical treatments and are making excellent strides in the field of tissue engineering.  In order to create better tissues engineers need to study different types of stem cells, how to manipulate the stem cell’s environment and how to construct better tissues. This is important because engineers are not able to perform clinical trials yet. Biomedical engineers, studying tissue engineering, are able to contribute many different therapies and will be able to finds cure for many different ailments.

Stem Cells

Stems cells are cells that can self-renew and can differentiate into other types of cells. When put under the right microenvironment stem cells can form other types of cells like skin or heart cells. There are many different ways scientist can acquire stem cells and each type of stem cells has their own benefits for tissue engineering.

Types of Stem Cells

1.      Adipose tissue

·         Comes from epithelial tissue.

·         It is known as fat tissue.

·         Has a low retention rate

2.      Umbilical cord stem cells

·         Exhibit better growth properties and tissue formation than adipose tissue stem cells

·         These stem cells are taken from the umbilical cord at birth and are autologous to whoever stems cells they are

Bone Marrow Stem Cells

The most common adult stem cell source comes from bone marrow (Wang). There are three main types of cells. Each with their own special properties

·         Mesenchymal stem cells are easy to cryogenically preserve.

·         Endothelial stem/progenitor cells are vasculogenesis; they can easily form blood vessels.

·         Hematopoietic stem cells are highly expandable (Wu).

Why Engineers Study Stem Cells

The reason engineers are looking into different types of stem cell research is because each type of stem cell possesses different properties making some better for tissue engineering than others. Engineers have to study how different microenvironments will impact stem cell growth and differentiation. The ways stem cells grow affects how they form tissues. Also, engineers need to make sure the tissues they are creating are biocompatible with the original tissue. Sometimes, the original tissue will reject the new tissue. When creating new technologies, engineers need to put the safety of their clients first.  Further studies must be done to find out how to have better cell retention and how to create more functional tissues. Although engineers are making enormous strides in tissue engineering, there is still a long way to go before we perfect the technique and create suitable tissues for human tissue grafts.