Tissues and organs are prone to damage by ageing, disease, or trauma. Regenerative medicine is a branch of translational medicine that focuses on regrowth, repairing, or replacing a damaged tissue or organ to restore its function. Regenerative medicine is a multidisciplinary field of research that takes advantage of therapeutic stem cells and tissue engineering methods to reach its goal. The advent of microfluidics and the development of novel microfluidic devices have been able to give a boost to regenerative medicine research.

Regenerative medicine deals both with providing an understanding of the causes of the damage to the tissues as well as methods for restoring the functionality of the tissue and the mechanisms by which stem cells repair the tissue. More accurate disease, trauma, or degenerative models can give us a better understanding of the causes of the tissue malfunction. In this regard, microfluidics application is crucial. Microfluidic chips are capable of providing a highly controlled environment for cell and tissue culture.

Microfluidic devices can be fabricated to be used for following applications in regenerative medicine:

• Providing a biologically relevant microenvironment for cell and tissue culture
• Creating soluble gradients
• Ease of use of biomaterials and hydrogels as tissue constructs
• Chemical and mechanical signalling
• Real-time analysis using embedded sensors

Various organs have been the target of microfluidic regenerative medicine in recent years. These regeneration-on-chip methods include:

• Neural regeneration
• Vascular regeneration
• Musculoskeletal regeneration
• Kidney regeneration
• Lung regeneration
• Heart regeneration
  

• Tissue engineering toward organ-specific regeneration and disease modeling
• Regeneration-on-a-chip? The perspectives on use of microfluidics in regenerative medicine