Emerging Areas in Bioengineering

Chapter 35Cell Delivery Systems Using Biomaterials

Youngro Byun and Jee-Heon Jeong

35.1 Introduction to Cell-Based Therapeutics

With the advancements in cell biology in the late 1970s to early 1980s, the promise of in vitro produced organs and tissues highlighted the field of tissue engineering and, more broadly, cell-based therapeutics, and as a result, cell-based therapies have emerged as a new pharmaceutical frontier today [1]. Biomedical science has made a paradigm shift that comprises the use of human and microbial cells as therapeutic entities [2]. The functional characteristics of cells are their ability of performing therapeutic tasks, selective behavior, capacity to handle human genetic variability, and the ability to remain functional ...