BioEngineering

Tissue Engineering

Modern biology has opened up new approaches to the repair, augmentation or replacement of dysfunctional tissue. Indeed, not a day goes by without the media presenting a new treatment for cancer, heart diseases, autoimmune diseases, etc.

In all the hype, it is easy to forget that very few of these novel treatments have proven efficient in clinical trials. Gene therapy, for example, has failed to achieve clinically significant improvements in all but a handful of patients despite hundreds of trials.

There is no doubt, however, that gene therapy, cellular therapies, and tissue engineering will become a key element of modern medicine. We are merely learning that modern therapies are not magic bullets, but therapies - like all others - subject to safety and efficacy constraints, pharmaco-kinetic limitations, etc.

We are involved with resolving some of technical problems related to haematopoietic (blood) cell therapies and the use of avascular microtissues for drug discovery and delivery.