Advances in Replacement Organs and Tissue Engineering (Technical Insights)Frost & SullivanSeptember 30, 2008 99 Pages - SKU: MC2206887 |
| Shortage of Replacement Organs Opens up Opportunities for Tissue Engineering Technology Over the last decade, tissue engineering has stepped out of the realm of science fiction, into research labs and hospitals all over the world. With the realization that technology can be developed from the body due to the presence of cell types that can grow in artificial medium, concerns about the cultivation of cells and assembling them to grow into organs have vaporized. Some functional organs that have been developed in vitro include heart, kidney and skin types. These advances in tissue engineering have come about mainly due to the need to plug the shortage in organ supply and treat chronic wounds. As conventional wound healing technologies relied on synthetic materials that required frequent replacement, there was a huge opportunity for tissue engineering technology that supported the requirements of chronic wound healing. "The future of tissue engineering lies in the fields of biomaterial scaffold applications (both static and resorbable) but more so in organ regeneration and cell-based applications," say the analysts of this research. "This is essentially because biomaterial applications will more or less serve a supportive function for tissue growth, but cell-based therapies and organ regeneration technology's ability to offer organ substitutes and improved tissue layers to treat wounds of the skin and bone create a great deal of opportunity." As the pace of research in biomaterial applications has outstripped that of cell therapy and organ regeneration, scientists in the tissue engineering space are working on enhancing the production of allogenic and stem cells through the development of bioreactor technologies. Such technological growth is vital to ensure the long-term application of the technology. However, the use of cell therapy and organ regeneration to create synthetic organs comes with a set of challenges regarding increasing the scale of production, regulatory hurdles, and enhancing the proof of concept studies. More importantly, they need to demonstrate the safety, quality and application of the technology in real time. Therefore, industry participants are striving to establish clinical trial protocols and standard procedures for manufacturing. "There are concerns regarding the application of skin graft, especially xenografts that could have serious impact on the histocompatibility of the tissue with the host," notes the analyst. "Technically, this also remains a key problem in terms of identifying the right kind of tissue that could be employed in case of injuries." It is crucial to associate tissue samples with the patient’s blood groups to prevent any kind of immunogenic reactions, and hence, companies provide immunosuppresants in most cases. Further, considering that for the most part allogenic sources are employed, there is considerable risk of infection by microbes. "The best way to counter safety issues in tissue engineering is to develop a set of industry-standard operating procedures and protocols that could be further segmented into research in cell-based therapies and biomaterial applications," observes the analyst. "Essentially owing to variations in the practices across laboratories in the tissue engineering sector, there is bound to be some differences in the quality of the products that are generated and released." Moreover, the lack of standard regulatory protocols is also a key reason for the longer time-to-market of several products. A set of standard regulatory principles that govern tissue engineering activity worldwide will hasten the process of tissue engineering, aiding progress in the field. |
