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Design and development of tissue engineered lung: Progress and challenges

Joan E. Nichols, Jean A. Niles and Joaquin Cortiella

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Before we can realize our long term goal of engineering lung tissue worthy of clinical applications, advances in the identification and utilization of cell sources, development of standardized procedures for differentiation of cells, production of matrix tailored to meet the needs of the lung and design of methods or techniques of applying the engineered tissues into the injured lung environment will need to occur. Design of better biomaterials with the capacity to guide stem cell behavior and facilitate lung lineage choice as well as seamlessly integrate with living lung tissue will be achieved through advances in the development of decellularized matrices and new understandings related to the influence of extracellular matrix on cell behavior and function. We have strong hopes that recent developments in the engineering of conducting airway from decellularized trachea will lead to similar breakthroughs in the engineering of distal lung components in the future.

Authors

Joan E. Nichols

University of Texas Medical Branch; Galveston, TX

Jean A. Niles

University of Texas Medical Branch; Galveston, TX

Joaquin Cortiella

University of Texas Medical Branch; Galveston, TX

This is an open-access article

 Download PDF

If the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.