Tissue Engineering and Organ Regeneration
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this advanced course on the biological and engineering principles behind rebuilding damaged tissues and organs. It covers why adult tissues fail to regenerate spontaneously after injury, surgery, disease, or aging, and the cellular and molecular mechanisms researchers target to induce regeneration instead. Lectures examine the criteria biomaterial scaffolds must meet to deliver cells and regulatory molecules, with case studies on treating conditions such as stroke and blindness through engineered devices. Students look at documented clinical successes and failures of regenerative medicine devices to understand what separates a workable therapy from a laboratory curiosity. Course materials include lecture notes and readings from MIT's Mechanical Engineering and Health Sciences and Technology departments, freely available under a Creative Commons license, with no certificate offered through OCW itself.