CELL*WISE

Personally, I do not actually use the phrase "Regenerative Medicine" that much. As for my background, I would describe myself as a researcher in tissue engineering, and when it comes up, I generally describe my current work as laboratory research with stem cells, biomaterials, biomolecules, and engineering design aspects for the goal of engineering a certain functional tissue in a way that it best mimics that natural tissue. So, it could be that I don't use the term Regenerative Medicine because I work in a lab and I am not (yet?) involved with the actual implantation (patient use) of stem-cell based engineered tissues. Allow me to elaborate.

Many people use terms "Tissue Engineering" and "Regenerative Medicine" interchangeably, which is usually acceptable because they both have the same goal. Technically though, I would say that although the connotations of each terminology are similar, the actual denotations of the terms are not exactly the same (more on that below).
Many people will use both terms together in the same sentence or description. For example, the NIH definition given on the PTEI (Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative) site reads:
"Regenerative medicine/tissue engineering is a rapidly growing multidisciplinary field
involving the life, physical, and engineering sciences that seeks to develop functional cell,
tissue, and organ substitutes to repair, or enhance biological function that has been lost due to
congenital abnormalities, injury, disease, or aging."
This definition is cited as being from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, June 2004. The statement puts the two terms together along with a broad description, which generally speaking seems okay. But it also makes it look like regenerative medicine and tissue engineering are the same thing. The NIH Definition given on the Tissue Engineering Pages site also begins with:
"Tissue Engineering/regenerative medicine is an emerging multidisciplinary field..."

I think the terms can be used together but should actually be kept separate. A simple example of when the terms are used "together but separate" is with TERMIS - the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society.

Nowadays, I would say that Tissue Engineering is a significant part of what is referred to as Regenerative Medicine. But I think there a few aspects that make the two terms distinguishable. First, when the term Regenerative Medicine is used, it most usually implies that stem cells are utilized. When the term Tissue Engineering is used, it does not always mean that stem cells are used, because people also use primary/mature/differentiated cells from the human patient (autologous) or from another human patient (allogeneic) or even from another animal (xenogeneic, e.g. from a pig). But the current trend in Tissue Engineering seems to be to use stem cells, adult or embryonic stem cells depending on the tissue application, because of the advantages. Furthermore, Tissue Engineering usually refers to the engineering of tissues first in vitro, meaning in a laboratory setting, and not yet implanted in an animal or human, which would be in vivo. Tissue Engineering will involve the use of a biocompatible material usually referred to as a "scaffold" because most often it will temporarily provide a 3D structure (usually with specific organization and properties) for the cells so that the whole construct can then be implanted and the biomaterial scaffolds will biodegrade with time, while the cells regenerate the certain tissue defect. To me, the term Regenerative Medicine is more general and more focused on the clinical use of engineered tissues or stem-cell based therapies with human patients.

The fields of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering have grown rapidly in the past couple of years, and are now resulting in actual products or services that patients can use. Also, it seems that every other week, I find a new (well, new to me) regenerative medicine-related company that I then add to the "Companies/Industry" section in the right sidebar of this blog, which now has the largest number of links compared to my other categories.

Last week at the 3rd Annual World Congress of Regenerative Medicine, the CEO of Organogenesis, Inc., Geoff McKay, talked about taking the exciting science and research of regenerative medicine and commercializing it into a profitable business. Here is a press release of this news. Interestingly in that news article, when describing "About Regenerative Medicine" it is written that "The related terms 'Tissue Regeneration,' 'Tissue Engineering' and 'Stem Cell Therapies' are often used to refer to some of the activities under the umbrella of Regenerative Medicine." I guess that's a good way of saying it!
Organogenesis was one of the first companies to successfully mass produce tissue-engineered skin containing living cells with their product Apligraf, which received FDA approval in 1998.
Actually, there were several other companies involved with tissue-engineered skin products around that time (although each one has differences, advantages, and disadvantages) including Advanced Tissue Sciences (products Dermagraft and Transcyte), Integra Life Sciences (product Integra), and Genzyme (product Epicell) and LifeCell (product Alloderm). Both Advanced Tissue Sciences and Organogenesis filed for bankruptcy in 2002, but Organogenesis bounced back with big help from Novartis in 1999, and therefore are now the actual first profitable regenerative medicine company. Last year, company Advanced BioHealing, Inc. acquired the former ATS-products Dermagraft and Transcyte, and began sales of Dermagraft earlier this year.
McKay included in his talk the terms "RegenMed 1.0" and "RegenMed 2.0" which were recently coined by Chris Mason in an article in Regenerative Medicine journal. Chris Mason has set up a web page for "RegenMed 2.0" within his website, on which more will be added soon. His excellent editorial article "Regenerative Medicine 2.0" explains that we are now in the era of "Regenerative Medicine 2.0" where there is much focus on the translation of research into commercially successful products. He mentions the Time magazine article from 2000 that named tissue engineering the hottest job for the future. I remember buying this issue off the newsstand when it came out and being excited, although I was still finishing undergrad at the time. However, when I graduated with a B.S. a year later, I realized that there was far more media hype than there was actual tissue engineering jobs/companies existing at that time. Very interestingly, Mason explains that the term "tissue engineering" is being replaced by "regenerative medicine" or "cell therapy". I realized that what he is referring to is that in the healthcare environment for patients, the terms "cell therapy" and "regenerative medicine" sound more friendly and make more sense, as in real healthcare benefits to patients, than does "tissue engineering" which is more the methodology. Ahh, now this makes more sense to me (than when I originally started writing the earlier portion of this post).
In his article "Regenerative Medicine 2.0" (which again you can find HERE), Chris Mason includes a fantastic and detailed table comparing the so-called era of RegenMed 1.0 (1985-2002) to the current period that we are in, coined RegenMed 2.0.