Grand Espoir: Robotics in Regenerative Medicine

Here, we overlook the brief history of regenerative medicine, and summarize the expectation to breakthroughs achieved by robotics in the field. One expected application of robotics is an automatic cell culture system, which can dramatically reduce the cost for manufacturing bioengineered tissues conventionally requiring GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) facility for Cell Processing Center. The other is a robotic surgery system for less invasive transplantation of cells and fabricated tissues. To show the feasibility of robotic surgery-assisted transplantation, we have shown the success of cell sheet transplantation to luminal surface of living canine esophagus by endoscopy. Thus, the contribution of robotics to regenerative medicine has been wanted to realize the greatest success of tissue engineering and cell-based medicine.