ABSTRACT
Cellular Engineeering: Future of Tissue
Banks
Professor and Director of
Research
Department of Surgery,University of Western Australia,
Cellular engineering,
principally the control and regulation of cell proliferation, differentiation
and function, is vital to the success of cell based therapeutic applications
and technologies. Despite significant
advances in cell and tissue engineering, current approaches to the engineering
of cell-surface interactions and extracellular matrix
design fall short of mimicking the complexity of those relationships in the
cell or tissue’s physiological microenvironment. When considering the bioengineering of
complex systems, such as tissue or organs, we must reduce the complexity of the
system whilst remaining in control of cell behaviour and
function. Therefore, a thorough
understanding of the cellular bioprocesses and assembly, and how factors or
stimuli affect them, will significantly aid future biomedical engineering
research. Optimizing the combinations of
cells, matrices and locally and systemically active stimuli, is a complex
process characterized by an inter-reliant set of variables with a potentially
infinite scope of combinations.