Biomaterials, organ bioengineering and regenerative medicine are step-by-step revolutionizing general surgery and opening up innovative prospects in the treatment of several pathologic conditions. Organ bioengineering has rapidly gained attention as a promising solution to the organ shortage crisis for transplant. By combining biomaterials, stem cells biology and bioprinting technologies, researchers aim to create functional organs tailored to a patient's specific needs. Decellularization and cell-on-scaffold technology is one of the main avenues of research currently under investigation. This procedure consists of removing the cellular compartment from an organ, leaving behind an extracellular matrix-based scaffold, which could be then repopulated (recellularization) with the patient recipient's own cells. Decellularization/recellularization strategy, which avoids both the problem of lifelong immunosuppression and organ scarcity, has been successfully used to create bioengineered trachea, bladder and blood vessels. More recently it has been applied for the creation of more complex organs such as the liver, kidney and pancreas. In addition, organ bioengineering is proving to be a valuable tool for the development of preclinical surgical oncology models. Regenerative medicine and tissue and organ bioengineering have thus opened so far new frontiers in surgery; these advances have applications in tissue reconstruction, organ replacement and preclinical studies.

In the four studies presented, we show how organ bioengineering could be applied to liver, kidney and pancreas transplantation. Finally, we present a paper assessing the potential use of tridimensional hepatic extracellular matrix (ECM) for long-term in vitro culture envisioning 3D cell culturing for cancer bioengineering.

We lastly discuss our results and their perspectives for transplantation and surgical oncology sciences. As research in this field continues to advance, tissue and organ bioengineering are poised to have a growing importance in surgical science in the coming years by providing more effective and personalized curative strategies.