Regenerative medicine: The past, the present, and the future

Abstract

The modern era of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine only began a quarter century ago; however, the basic concept of using a more biologic approach to treat tissue and organ disease goes back to the first half of the 20th century. The term tissue engineering was created in 1987 and the first meeting with the name tissue engineering was held in 1988. The initial focus of this field was on replacement tissues, i.e. developing substitute tissues outside of the body for implantation into the body, Skin substitutes were some of the first targets. In the 1990s these had moved into commercial development, and at the turn of the century there were beginning to be products on the market. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.