Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine: new trends and directions - a year in review

Tissue engineering (TE) is continuously evolving assimilating inputs from adjacent scientific areas and their technological advances, including nanotechnology developments that have been spawning the range of available options for the precise manipulation and control of cells and cellular environments. Simultaneously, with the maturation of the field, TE has a growing and marked impact in other fields, such as cancer and other diseases research, enabling tri-dimensional (3D) tumor/tissue models of increased complexity that more closely resemble living tissue dynamics, playing a decisive role in the development of new and improved therapies. Nevertheless, TE is still struggling with translational issues. On this matter, the advent of personalized and precision medicine has opened new perspectives, particularly with the striking evolutions enabled by 3D bioprinting technologies. Based on a modified methodology grounded in the past years' approach, we have identified and reviewed some of the most high-impact publications on the topics that are revolutionizing TE and helping to define the future directions of the field, namely: (1) New trends in TE: Personalized/precision regenerative medicine and 3D bioprinting, (2) Contributions of TE to other fields: microfabricated tissue-engineered 3D models for cancer and other diseases research, and (3) Diagnostic and theranostic tools: monitoring and real-time control of TE systems.The authors acknowledge the financial support from FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), for the fellowship SFRH/BPD/112459/2015 (R.M.A.D.), SFRH/BPD/111729/ 2015 (M.T.R.), and for the Career Consolidation Grant IF/ 00593/2015 (M.E.G.). R.L.R. acknowledges the European Research Council for the project ComplexiTE grant agreement ERC-2012-ADG 20120216-321266. This article is a result of the project ‘‘Accelerating tissue engineering and personalized medicine discoveries by the integration of key enabling nanotechonologies, marine-derived biomaterials and stem cells,’’ supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).