Health, nutrition and environment

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

© Rafael Kroetz/Fraunhofer

Regenerative Medicine

The goal of regenerative medicine is to restore damaged organs to health. Cell and tissue therapy using autologous products, in which the patient’s own cells are used for the therapy, is one promising approach in this field. This method is well suited for degenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s; for autoimmune diseases, such as Type 1 diabetes; or for tissue damage resulting for example from a heart attack. Tissue engineering is another method. Here, organs or organ segments are reconstructed using human cells specific to those organs.

Projects

  • SkinHeal - Healing skin in a Petri dish

    Übermorgen-Projekte

    Researchers at five Fraunhofer Institutes want to make the treatment of chronic wounds more effective and enable patients themselves to check whether their open wounds are healing or have become infected with bacteria. The researchers are pooling their expertise in the Beyond Tomorrow project “SkinHeal.”

  • Artificial liver for drug tests

    The liver ist one of the most importnat metabolizing organs in humans. Fraunhofer researchers have developed a model of the liver, which is viable outside the body and which is suitable for testing drugs.

  • Blood Vessels from Your Printer

    Researchers have been working at growing tissue and organs in the laboratory for a long time. These days, tissue engineering enables us to build up artificial blodd vessels in their BioRap project that will be able to supply artificial tissue and maybe even complex organs in future.

  • Bone-hard biomaterials

    Screws used in surgical operations are often made of titanium. They usually have to be removed after a while or replaced by new ones. A new biomaterial makes this unnecessary. It promotes bone growth and is biodegradable.