Regenerative medicine may be defined as the process of replacing or "regenerating" human cells, tissues, or organs to restore or establish normal function. This field holds the promise of regenerating damaged tissues and organs in the body by replacing damaged tissue or by stimulating the body's own repair mechanisms to heal tissues or environmental organs. Regenerative medicine also may enable scientists to grow tissues and organs in the laboratory and safely implant them when the body is unable to heal itself.
Regenerative Medicine refers to a group of biomedical approaches to clinical therapies that may involve the use of stem cells. Examples include cell therapies (the injection of stem cells or progenitor cells); immunomodulation therapy (regeneration by biologically active molecules administered alone or as secretions by infused cells); and tissue engineering (transplantation of laboratory-grown organs and tissues). While covering a broad range of applications, in practice the latter term is closely associated with applications that repair or replace portions of or whole tissues (i.e., bone, cartilage, blood vessels, bladder, skin). Often, the tissues involved require certain mechanical and structural properties for proper functioning. The term has also been applied to efforts to perform specific biochemical functions using cells within an artificially-created support system (e.g., artificial pancreas or liver).