An Overview of Tissue Engineering as an Alternative for Toxicity Assessment.

Tissue engineering is a multidisciplinary field that combines aspects of biology, material sciences, engineering and medicine - the ultimate goal being able to fabricate replacement tissues and/or organs for an ageing population. However, parallel to this milestone, is the exploitation of the biomimetic constructs as feasible alternatives to in vivo/ex vivo toxicity testing models due to their accurate representation of innate tissue and organs. Herein, we summarise a range of concepts within tissue engineering with a particular emphasis on biological material selection and implications to animal testing.