Tissue Engineering of Esophagus

Abstract

Regenerative medicine is a multidisciplinary science that combines the principles of engineering and those of biological sciences toward the goal of providing possible solutions for current problem of tissue or organ loss. Esophagus replacement with tissue engineered substitutes has been an area of focus since surgical replacement alternatives such as gastric pull-up, jejunal replacement, and colon transposition are associated with severe morbidities and lower quality of life in the patients. Although the esophagus seems to be a simple tubular organ, research in the past two decades has exposed its complexity in engineering this structural as well as functional organ. In this chapter, the individual building blocks of cells that constitute the esophagus will be focused in context of experimental efforts to engineer the esophagus. The prospect of fetal approach in engineering of the esophagus has been extensively investigated in the past decade by our group and will be presented in this chapter especially with an overview of issues related to sourcing of cells, design and selection of scaffolds and polymers, hybrid construct using co-culture approaches, and the use of bioreactors.