Developmental engineering: design of clinically efficacious bioartificial tissues through developmental and systems biology.

A major transition has been recently realized in tissue engineering towards the acceleration of clinical translation with the exploitation of the mechanisms of in vivo tissue development that can assure the formation of authentic, complex tissue structures (developmental engineering). The use as implants of intermediate developmental tissue forms, developmental modules that can autonomously progress in development and be transformed to mature tissue forms has improved the clinical efficacy, and equally important gave the ability for its prediction. Interestingly, critical concepts for the properties of developmental modules that are now studied in systems biology were developed by ancient philosophers with impressive subtlety and prescience.