Tissue Engineering

Abstract

A tissue or organ may fail due to trauma, tumor, congenital disease, or other pathology. When that occurs, the standard clinical procedure includes transferring healthy tissue to the damaged site in the same patient or transplanting a functional organ from a donor. Nevertheless, it is clear to see that there are great inconveniences: the shortage of donors, rejection risk, and the diseases broadcast. It has become essential to develop new medical therapies in this area, and tissue engineering (TE) evolved to be a solution. While there are numerous approaches in the TE domain, in this chapter, we will only focus on using additive manufacturing (AM) technologies to build 3D constructs aiming to mimic the native human tissues. Difficulties and constraints are presented, followed by the available methods to manufacture. Some examples are provided for hard and soft tissue, exploring the future expectations on the field.