Clinics in plastic surgery
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Regenerative medicine is evolving toward a powerful new paradigm of functional restoration. With the ethical use of gene therapy or through the manipulation of autologous tissues, improved tissue replacements may soon be available. The promise of engineered whole organs, although fraught with technical hurdles, remains on the horizon. As these advances occur, physicians and surgeons of the twenty-first century will possess ever more powerful tools to restore form and function.
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No single scientific field can generate the ideal method of engineering bone. However, through collaboration and expansion of programs in bone tissue engineering, the right combination of materials, cells, growth factors, and methodology will come together for each clinical situation such that harvesting bone grafts will become obsolete. This article reviews the need for engineered bone and provides a historical perspective of bone engineering research, current research efforts, and the future direction of this work.