Recent years have seen an upsurge of significant interest in cell-based technologies. A range of productive and lively debate have taken place relating to tissue engineering, namely the construction of tissues and whole organs using molecularly-designed resorbable biomaterials to create tissue de novo, the potential use of human embryonic stem cells for transplantation and regenerative medicine, with similar potential for adult-derived stem cells, and gene therapy, in relation to cell transplantation. New findings in biomimetic materials, cell signalling pathways, extracellular matrix receptors and ligands, growth factors, and the human genome project, all present particularly motivating sources for the development of research in the evergrowing biomedical field. The purpose of this book is to stimulate further the work in biomedicine and to make the issues of related scientific disciplines accessible to a wider readership by characterising the current state of research in the biomedical field. The lectures and a selection of the presentations from BlOMED 200- th The 9 International Symposium on Biomedical Science and Technology, held in September 2002 in Turkey- constitute the basis for the volume. Tissue engineering, stem cells, cell and gene therapies were the major topics presented and discussed in the symposium. This book is intended to serve as an up-to-date synopsis of the major developments of our area through the work reflected in BlOMED 2002, though not covering all aspects of the topics, due to the natural restrictions within a volume of this kind.

In recent years cell-based technologies have gained significant scientific attention, and have become a matter of intense public debate as well. Namely, (i) tissue engineering, the construction of tissues and whole organs using molecularly-designed resorbable biomaterials to create new tissue de novo with or without transplanting cells; (ii) the potential use of human embryonic stem cells for transplantation and regenerative medicine (with similar potential for adult-derived stem cells); (iii) and gene therapy, in relation with cell transplantation, have taken their places as the most discussed biomedical issues of the day. New findings in biomimetic materials, cell signalling pathways, extracellular matrix receptors and ligands, growth factors, and the human genome project are motivating the developments in these challenging research areas. This book includes manuscripts on tissue engineering, stem cells and gene therapies authored by world-renowned scientists of the field. The first section of the volume consists of four chapters giving perspectives for the current status and potential future of tissue engineering and stem cell technologies. The second section of the volume includes five chapters based on experimental and clinical data. In this section, the role of stem cells in liver tissue engineering, cell-based therapies in diabetes mellitus, and chronic degenerative diseases of the central nervous system, and adult-derived stem cell therapies are discussed. The two chapters of the third section focus on the biomarkers for tissue-engineered products, namely for tissue-engineered skin. The eight chapters of the fourth section discuss novel biomaterials developed for neural-, vascular-, aortic-, bone-, cartilage- and endocrine pancreas-tissue engineering applications. The last section of the book includes chapters on practical gene targeting applications, controlled release in gene therapy and tissue engineering, antibodies in cancer, acute-phase genes and phage-displayed peptide libraries. Proceedings of BIOMED 2002 The 9th International Symposium on Biomedical Science and Technology, held September 19-22, 2002, in Antalya, Turkey.