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9
Environment-Friendly Methods for Converting Biodegradable
Polyesters into Nano-Sized Materials
Stoyko Fakirov

9.1
Tissue Engineering in Medicine and the Polymeric Materials Needed

Organ transplantation nowadays practically has no technical problems. The prob-
lem is the lack of donors – in the United States alone a quarter of the patients in
need die while waiting for a suitable donor. Figure 9.1 summarizes data referring
to the number of donors and that of those who needed help over the decade
1988–1998. One can see that while the number of donors doubled over the
10-year period, the number of people on the waiting list increased almost five
times [1, 2]!
Such a dramatic situation needed new ways of solution as an alternative to
waiting for human donors. The solution was found in the creation of a new sci-
ence – that of tissue engineering. Tissue engineering is the use of a combination
of cells, engineering, and material methods to improve or replace biological
functions (tissue, organs, etc.) [3]. The term regenerative medicine is often used
synonymously with tissue engineering, although those involved in regenerative
medicine place greater emphasis on the use of stem cells to produce tissues
[4]. Currently, the two terms, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine are
combined in the term TERM [5].
In 2003, the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States published
a report entitled “The Emergence of Tissue Engineering as a Research Field” [4],
which gives a thorough description of the history of this field. A commonly applied
definition of tissue engineering, as stated by Langer and Vacanti [3], is “an inter-
disciplinary field that applies the principles of engineering and life sciences toward
the development of biological substitutes that restore, maintain, or improve tis-
sue function or a whole organ”[3]. Tissue engineering has also been defined as
“understanding the principles of tissue growth, and applying this to produce func-
tional replacement tissue for clinical use”[5].
Since its definition, the field of TERM has grown substantially. A simple search
for “tissue engineering” or “regenerative medicine” within a commonly used
®
database (Scopus ; Elsevier) reveals over 40 000 hits to date, with more than

Biodegradable Polyesters, First Edition. Edited by Stoyko Fakirov.
© 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. Published 2015 by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.