MicroRNAs in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine

The body has a large regenerative capacity to cope with the continuous adverse challenges of high-calorie diets, aging, inflammation, and wear and tear, as well as acute injuries such as myocardial infarction. However, if the amount of sustained damage exceeds the body’s repair capacity, regenerative medicine, including tissue engineering, provides temporary or permanent assistance. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) influence several processes in damage, repair, and regeneration of tissues. For this reason they are studied as targets and tools for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, which reiterate a number of these processes. This chapter highlights current strategies using miRNAs for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine—for example, their influence in of mesenchymal stem cell differentiation to osteoblasts and chondrocytes for bone and cartilage repair as well their role in myogenic differentiation of satellite cells.