Current status of regenerative replacement of the airway

Tracheal replacement has been attempted since the beginning of the last century, but always failed because of the difficulties in harvesting and revascularizing its microvascular network and the necessity for heavy immunosuppression. Regenerative medicine is an emerging interdisciplinary field of research and clinical applications focused on the repair, replacement or regeneration of cells, tissues or organs to restore impaired function. Among the different regenerative medicine approaches, the application of scaffolds or matrices to grow new tissues or organs from isolated cells, tissue or synthetic compounds is the basic principle in tissue engineering. By doing so, immunosuppression is avoided. In this article, we describe the strategies that could have relevant clinical applications and the translational research approaches used to clinically replace irreversible diseases of the trachea, and discuss how to make this stem cell-based technology available to everyone.