Tissue engineering - Pioneering future technology

Translated, tissue engineering means tissue construction or cultivation. The goal is the artificial production of biological tissue through the targeted cultivation of cells. This is intended to replace or regenerate diseased tissue in a patient. Already today, injured cartilage and other damaged structures can be repaired with tissue engineering. But this is just the beginning. Various research teams, many of them also in Germany, are currently trying to advance and expand the artificial construction of biological tissue. Experts now assume that it will be possible to grow whole organs in the laboratory in the future. What sounds like a Hollywood production is in fact quite conceivable. Using methods such as 3D printing of living cells, more and more filigree biological spare parts can also be produced.

Furthermore, tissue engineering also represents the desire for a plausible need. Not only in Germany is the population aging and with it the demand for innovative treatment methods. Tissue engineering provides a sustainable way to alleviate the diseases affecting the aging population in particular. This includes some common diseases such as arthrosis. Furthermore, a very sensitive problem can be solved by tissue engineering, namely that of organ transplants. In 2020, around 9,100 people in Germany were on the waiting list for a donor organ. In contrast, there were 913 organ donors nationwide. Tissue engineering opens up new possibilities here. Furthermore, it makes the sometimes extremely emotional debate about the organ donor card and the individual's right to self-determination obsolete. Thus, tissue engineering is also a desirable technology from an ethical point of view.

The human body is miraculously able to heal many injuries on its own. Fractures heal, wounds close and bruises quickly disappear without a trace. But even this miracle of self-healing has its natural limits. The human body does not always succeed in regenerating an injury or a defect. Parts of the heart muscle remain permanently destroyed after an inflammation or even a heart attack. For this reason, biologists, physicians and engineers have been trying for several years to develop interdisciplinary methods that support the body in repairing damage that it cannot naturally repair itself. This interface between medicine and technology is what is known as "tissue engineering". The basic idea here is to remove a few body cells from the human being in order to let them grow into larger cell clusters in the laboratory. These cell aggregates are later to serve as tissue substitutes. The body's own cell material is best suited for regenerative medicine in order to avoid rejection reactions by the immune system.

As mentioned at the beginning, tissue engineering is already being used in isolated cases today. For example, by removing the body's own cartilage, researchers have succeeded in rebuilding destroyed articular cartilage. With the help of tissue engineering, it is now even possible to develop prostheses for heart valves that grow together with the organism and make the previously necessary and repetitive operations superfluous. Although widespread use in everyday clinical practice is still a long way off and the necessary long-term studies are still lacking, the operations that have already taken place and have been successful are encouraging. In addition, researchers are working in parallel on the cultivation of heart muscle cells using stem cells from the patients. In the future, heart muscle tissue should be able to be repaired with these. No matter how fantastic these developments may sound, they are only the beginning of a much larger vision of tissue engineering. The goal is to grow entire replacement organs, such as a new liver or kidney, which should then make organ transplants unnecessary. Naturally, organs have an extremely complex structure, consist of different tissues and cell types and are also traversed by blood vessels. While it had long seemed unthinkable to construct such complicated and delicate organs, the advent of 3D printing dramatically changed this perspective. Thanks to advances in medical technology design, artificial organs suddenly seem quite possible. Using so-called bioprinting processes, aqueous solutions can be printed with different cells. Researchers have also developed astonishing methods for the construction of blood vessels, which are increasingly advancing tissue engineering. In the future, damaged nerve tracts are also to be treated with tissue engineering – the possibilities seem endless.

Tissue engineering is a process that opens up completely new possibilities for medical technology and humanity. It also promotes and demands innovations. Tissue engineering is characterized in particular by its interdisciplinary sphere of activity. Medical scientists as well as biologists and engineers work together to advance the vision of tissue engineering. As an agency for industrial design in Hamburg, we primarily deal with the technical and design components of future technologies. Among other things, our focus is on the ergonomics and usability of a medical device and its corporate product design. We try to optimize the day-to-day work of the medical staff every day. We welcome innovations, not only in tissue engineering, with open arms. As a design agency with more than 20 years of experience and over 500 realized projects, we are ready to take this big step and finalize it.

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