TISSUE ENGINEERING

The groundwork for developing biological substitutes for damaged tissue is being prepared by the new, rapidly evolving field of tissue engineering. This field, at the intersection of engineering and biology, is one of chemical engineering's promising frontiers. It draws on the chemical engineer's expert knowledge of fluid dynamics, mass transport, process modeling, materials design, and chemistry. Working with physicians and other biological specialists, chemical engineers are designing biocompatible casings for cell transplants, polymer composites for patching wounds, scaffolds that guide and encourage cells to form tissue, bioreactors for large-scale production of therapeutic cells, and experimental and mathematical models to predict cell behavior.