Future perspectives in tissue engineering: ‘Tissue Engineering’ Review Series

Dr. Charles Vacanti can be considered to be some of the "Stem cells of tissue engineering", as it has been put once by Dr. Peter Johnson, the former president of the Tissue Engineering Society International. They made some of the seminal observations that have enabled many people worldwide to develop many types of tissues. A world-renowned leader in tissue engineering, Dr. Charles A. Vacanti is a co-founder of the Tissue Engineering Society, where he currently serves as emeritus governor, and is the co-editor of Tissue Engineering, the organization's official journal. His research involves the generation of new functional tissue using a combination of living cells and synthetic biodegradable polymer scaffolds. He is especially interested in spinal cord regeneration. Prior to his current position, Dr. Vacanti was chairman of the department of anesthesiology and a professor of anesthesiology and surgery at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester. He had also been on-staff at the UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester since 1994. Dr. Vacanti has published more than 200 journal articles, book chapters and reviews, and abstracts. In addition to his research initiatives, he has also been granted approximately 20 patents in the field of tissue engineering and has more than a dozen pending. He is a member of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the International Anesthesia Research Society, Massachusetts Medical Society, Massachusetts Society of Anesthesiologists, and the Association of University Anesthesiologists. It was the groundbreaking idea of Charles Vacanti together with others to visualize the idea behind tissue engineering to the public when he transplanted chondrocytes utilizing a polymercell construct to produce tissue-engineered cartilage in the shape of a human ear on the back of an immuno-compromised nude mouse, which was promptly dubbed Auriculosaurus. This disturbing image appeared in publications around the world and has ever since been perceived as the symbol of TE. Dr. Joseph P. Vacanti as a surgeon-scientist in the field of pediatric surgery and transplantation surgery had realized that the major problem in transplantation was insufficient donor organs, and that this was a specific manifestation of the general problem of every field of reconstructive surgery, namely that of insufficient tissue. Tribute to the Vacantis