Cell sheet approach for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

After the biotech medicine era, regenerative medicine is expected to be an advanced medicine that is capable of curing patients with difficult-to-treat diseases and physically impaired function. Our original scaffold-free cell sheet-based tissue engineering technology enables transplanted cells to be engrafted for a long time, while fully maintaining their viability. This technology has already been applied to various diseases in the clinical setting, including the cornea, esophagus, heart, periodontal ligament, and cartilage using autologous cells. Transplanted cell sheets not only replace the injured tissue and compensate for impaired function, but also deliver growth factors and cytokines in a spatiotemporal manner over a prolonged period, which leads to promotion of tissue repair. Moreover, the integration of stem cell biology and cell sheet technology with sufficient vascularization opens possibilities for fabrication of human three-dimensional vascularized dense and intact tissue grafts for regenerative medicine to parenchymal organs.