Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine represents a wide array of cell and biomaterial￾based approaches focusing on the repair, augmentation, and regeneration of diseased tissues
and organs. To this end, recent successes in clinical outcomes following implantation of
tissue-engineered trachea, bladder, and urinary conduit have highlighted the emergence of
common methodological frameworks for the development of technical approaches that
may be broadly applicable towards the regeneration of multiple, disparate hollow organs.
Similarly, recent progress towards regeneration of heart, kidney, liver, pancreas, spleen, and
central nervous system is identifying shared methodologies that may underlie the develop￾ment of foundational platform technologies broadly applicable towards the regeneration of
multiple solid organ systems. In all cases, emerging central themes include the use of a bio￾degradable scaffold to provide structural support for the developing neo-organ and the role
of committed or progenitor cell populations in establishing the regenerative microenviron￾ment of key secreted growth factors and extracellular matrix critical for catalyzing de novo
organogenesis.