Intestinal tissue engineering: where do we stand?

Tissue engineering has revolutionized the medical field by giving us the hope of generating alternative human tissues that could replace diseased ones. On this front, the generation of tissue-engineered neo-intestine in animal models has been a great endeavor with the ultimate goal of replacing the diseased gut or to treat short gut syndrome. Although this field and the generated neo-intestine are still in their infancy, this idea is so attractive that it has fascinated all medical personnel including gastroenterologists and gastrointestinal surgeons. We herein introduce the salient features of a tissue-engineered intestine, the hopes associated with it, and the few practical constraints in developing a "mature" human tissue-engineered intestine, which would be sufficient to treat short gut syndrome.