2013 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. The goal of regenerative engineering is to restore the structure and function of a complex organ. To this end, a focus on the translation of discoveries from the lab into the clinic has led to considerable progress in the areas of biomaterials, tissue engineering, and stem cell biology. Ultimately, the goal is to induce an endogenous regenerative response to replace damaged tissues with regenerated tissues that become functionally integrated into the host tissues. This vision of activating an endogenous regenerative potential is based on the realization that many animals exhibit this remarkable ability. These animals provide evidence that endogenous regeneration is a basic biological property that we as humans can learn to activate therapeutically. Although this has been little more than a dream up to this point, the remarkable progress in our ability to discover and manipulate biological processes has provided the tools and resources needed to make human regeneration a reality. In this chapter, we argue that all that is now standing in the way of successful regeneration is the lack of a feasible strategy to achieve that outcome. In theory, there may be many ways to develop such a strategy; however, we already know of one way that works extraordinarily well, which is the way that highly regenerative animals such as the salamander do it. Therefore, we argue that the strategy that is most likely to achieve success is to understand how salamanders are able to regenerate so well.
