再生医学体现了组织工程学和人造器官的特性，并涉及从心脏病学到肥胖，癌症，创伤等各种基本医学专科。用生物替代品再生或替换因伤害或疾病而丧失的组织的能力是21世纪医学上的巨大挑战之一。组织工程方面的工作是使用生物材料，活细胞，纳米材料，可降解聚合物，干细胞和生长因子来恢复受损的心肌，为不育症提供新的解决方案，药物输送的新型组织平台，分泌器官的替代品，神经可塑性和神经移植，和肌肉骨骼系统的重建等等。这些努力需要多个学科的共同努力，包括细胞/发育生物学，材料科学，分子生物学，高分子化学，实验外科和临床医学。
Regenerative medicine embodies tissue engineering and artificial organs and touches on essentially all medical specialties from cardiology through obstet-rics, cancer, trauma and others. The ability to regenerate or replace tissue that has been lost to injury or disease with biological substitutes is one of the great medical challenges of the 21st century. Efforts in tissue engineering are using biomaterials, living cells, nanomaterials, degradable polymers, stem cells, and growth factors to restore damaged myocardium, provide new solutions to infertility, novel tissue platforms for drug delivery, substitutes for secretory organs, neuroplasticity and nerve grafting, and reconstitution of the musculoskeletal system to name a few. These efforts require a confluence of effort from multiple disciplines including cell/developmental biology, materials science, molecular biology, polymer chemistry, experimental surgery, and clinical medicine.