History, challenges and perspectives of cell microencapsulation

Cell microencapsulation continues to hold significant promise for biotechnology and medicine. The controlled, and continuous, delivery of therapeutic products to the host by immunoisolated cells is a potentially cost-effec-tive method to treat a wide range of diseases. Although there are several issues that need to be addressed, including capsule manufacture, properties and perform-ance, in the past few years, a stepwise analysis on the essential obstacles and limitations has brought the whole technology closer to a realistic proposal for clini-cal application. This paper summarizes the current situ-ation in the cell encapsulation field and discusses the main events that have occurred along the way. Exciting biotechnological approaches have been developed over the past two decades that have set the stage for tissu