Repairing and replacing damaged tissue has traditionally had several problems. One major problem is the shortage of enough donor tissue. Another is that the immune system sees the new implanted tissue as foreign, and has an inflammatory response. Or even worse: Completely rejects the grafted tissue.
In the 1990s, a new field emerged, hoping to solve these problems by engineering the new replacement tissue in the lab. The materials used would be designed to bypass the body’s immune defense systems,among other things,by using stem cells.This is the field of Tissue Engineering(TE).
The Tissue Engineering Group
The Tissue Engineering group, founded in 2006 at the Dept. of Clinical Dentistry, University of Bergen, is led by Prof. Kamal Mustafa and aims to address the shortage of tissues available for repair and regeneration. It includes a multidisciplinary team of scientists, clinicians, and bioengineers, working in close collaboration with national and international partners. The group has consistently received funding from national and international, including EU, agencies to partner and coordinate large pre-clinical and clinical research projects. The group is also part of the Bergen Stem Cell Consortium.