Tissue Engineering and Developmental Biology: Going Biomimetic DONALD E. INGBER, 1 VAN C. MOW, 2 DAVID BUTLER, 3 LAURA NIKLASON, 4 JOHNNY HUARD, 5 JEREMY MAO, 6 IOANNIS YANNAS, 7 DAVID KAPLAN, 8 and GORDANA VUNJAK-NOVAKOVIC 9 ABSTRACT This article contains the collective views expressed at the first session of the workshop ‘‘Tissue Engineering—The Next Generation,’’ which was devoted to the interactions between developmental biology and tissue engineering. Donald Ingber discussed the chasms between developmental biology and tissue engineering from the perspective of a cell biologist who has had interest in tissue engineering since its early days. Van C. Mow shared a historical perspective on the development of tissue engineering as one of the first engineers involved in the field. David Butler offered an assessment of functional tissue engineering, a new area he helped establish and promote. Laura Niklason discussed how to be more effective in developing cellular therapies for large numbers of patients. Johnny Huard described his approach to tissue engineering, based on the use of muscle-derived cells. Jeremy Mao focused on cell homing and cell density in the context of native development and relevance to tissue engineering. Ioannis Yannas proposed a set of ‘‘rules’’ in organ regeneration. Collectively, the faculty expressed a remarkable level of enthusiasm for bridging the gaps between developmental biology and tissue engineering and offered new ideas on how to facilitate the interaction between the two fields. INTRODUCTION A BIO-MIMETIC APPROACH TO TISSUE ENGINEERING, or emu- lation of some aspects of normal tissue development and remodeling, could be a key to future success in the field. Bridging gaps between developmental biology and tissue engineering necessarily involves an understanding of the role of biomechanics at different length scales and integration of ideas from many different fields of science and engineering. For functional tissue engineering, it remains unclear whether an exact and complete match to in vivo mechanical forces is required, how far along the developmental pathway a graft should go before implantation, and how much of the normal developmental pathway should actually be recapitulated in vitro. Tissue engineering may in fact help improve our still incomplete understanding of many aspects of normal tissue 1 Vascular Biology Program, Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. 2 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, New York. 3 Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. 4 Departments of Anesthesia and Biomedical Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. 5 Departments of Orthopedic Surgery, Molecular Genetics, and Biochemistry and Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine, Stem Cell Research Center, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 6 College of Dental Medicine, Columbia University, New York, New York. 7 Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science Engineering, and Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 8 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts. 9 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, New York. TISSUE ENGINEERING Volume 12, Number 12, 2006 # Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. 3265