Advances in Bioengineering

Bioengineering is an exciting field that is rapidly advancing and has enormous potential to benefit humanity in numerous ways. Bioengineering is a subfield of regenerative medicine that aims to utilize regeneration to improve human health. Approaches to bioengineering may include building organs in vitro using cells and scaffolds or modifying the genetic material of an organism to achieve a desired phenotype. Currently, there is a huge push to advance some of the technologies being developed through bioengineering into clinical or environmental use. However, there are a number of barriers that scientist must overcome in order for this goal to be realized. This subject is discussed in detail in the first section of this book. The remaining content of this book focuses on the advances of specific ideas and technologies in the field of bioengineering. With regards to biomedical research the specific advances discussed in this book include the use of decellularized matrices, mesenchymal stem cells, biological scaffolds, drug delivery, prostheses, bone regeneration, cardiac regeneration, neural regeneration and vascular grafts and implantation techniques. Advances in the use of bioengineering to produce biofuels are also discussed.