Tissue engineering and regenerative therapeutics: The nexus of chemical engineering and translational medicine

Since its emergence nearly 30 years ago with the goal of fabricating replacement human tissues or assisting the body in repairing itself, several advances have been made in the fields of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. The assembly of living cells into tissues is akin to the scale-up operation of a chemical or biochemical process with several modules or units affecting the final product. The major modules or units in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine are cells, biodegradable scaffolds, bioreactors, and biomolecules. Each module is analogous to unit operations, where individual units must come together to successfully design engineered tissues for therapeutic and drug discovery applications. Basic principles of biological sciences, chemical engineering, materials chemistry, and polymer processing are frequently employed. More specifically, knowledge about viscous fluid flow, mass transfer, and reaction engineering is essential in tissue engineering. In this review article, we present the nexus between chemical engineering and tissue engineering for the rational design of engineered tissues or injectable cell-laden hydrogel systems.