Many strategies for regenerative medicine involve the implantation of cells (autologous or allogeneic) that can form new tissue and obtaining these cells with subsequent optimization of their function is thus a major area of research in itself. Patient-derived stem cells have great promise regarding personalized medicine, but we first need to establish protocols to direct them to differentiate into tissue-specific cells. This directing of differentiation can be achieved in many ways, among others stimulation with morphogens, gene therapy approaches and/or instructive biomaterials.
