Tissue Engineering is about providing an appropriate environment in which living cells can be delivered to damaged or diseased tissues of the body, and to stimulate their repair and regeneration so that normal function is restored. In this context, the right environmental conditions may take the form of a temporary support scaffold, or microporous biomaterial, the physical and mechanical properties of which are appropriate for the tissue in question, and which incorporates extracellular matrix materials and growth factors, and allows the exchange of nutrients and waste products to and from the implantation site. Thus Tissue Engineering requires input and skills from a range of scientific, engineering and medical disciplines. The aim of the recently established 'Interdisciplinary Research Collaboation in Tissue Engineering' is to create a centre of excellence that brings together a unique team of cell and molecular biologists, biomaterials scientists and engineers, and surgeons in order to achieve this goal. New cell-based therapies, based on good science and innovation, should provide hope to many, such as those with disfiguring scars, with chronic non-healing ulcers, with damaged and arthritic joints and chronic back problems, and for those with heart disease and other vascular problems.

The strategy underlying the UKCTE Programme is based on our belief that through good basic molecular and cellular research our scientific understanding of how living cells function will enable us to gain control and direct their activity to promote the repair of damaged and diseased tissues. The potential for medical intervention with a tissue engineering solution is seen nowhere better than with the chronic, persistent leg ulcer, which in a patient with diabetes provides a constant source of discomfort and incapacity. The patient does not lack the inherent capacity to heal a skin wound, but it is failing to occur naturally at the site of the ulcer. What is lacking is the biological signals, the chemical messengers and physical cues, that initiate the events of cell migration, blood vessel formation and tissue assembly that characterise normal wound healing. It is our plan to provide those biological signals within “tissue engineered” packages, suited to different clinical applications, by which we will kick-start a repair process that the patient’s own tissues can then go on to complete. A strategy of engaging patient tissue responses to complete healing by natural processes thus underlies our research.

It involves a timely collaboration between two outstanding research teams, one established in biomaterials and bioengineering at the University of Liverpool, and the other bringing excellence in molecular cellular sciences and medicine at the University of Manchester. The strength of this collaboration is that is combines the two sectors of science that are essential for progress in the development of clinically realisable techniques of tissue repair and regeneration. Tissue Engineering is totally dependent on the ability to manipulate cell behaviour in such a way as to produce three-dimensional tissues that can be used to repair damage in tissues and organs. It is a feature of this collaboration that it will enhance the highly rated Tissue Engineering programmes already underway within these two institutions. Through complementary research programmes, we aim to develop a new understanding of cellular functions within tissue engineering applications, so as to provide renewal of functional impairment, and to incorporate natural signals that will persuade the body to heal itself. The two Universities believe that it is the complementarity of these two existing world-class groups that is the greatest strength of this Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration, and that the programme it will lead will become a focus for Tissue Engineering within the UK and beyond.