In recent years, biotechnology research and development (R&D) in China has been receiving increasing attention from the world. With the open-door policy of the Chinese government, many international publications (for academia) and large market potential (for industry) constitute the two big reasons for the above phen- enon. Biotechnology has become one of the priorities in Mainland China for so- ing many important problems, such as food supply, health care, environment protection, and even energy. The central government has been implementing a c- ple of programs which cover a wide spectrum in...

Over the past five years, the immense financial pressure on the development and manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals has resulted in the increasing use and acce- ance of disposables, which are discarded after harvest and therefore intended only for single use. In fact, such disposables are implemented in all the main bioprocess production stages today and an even higher growth than those in the biopharmac- tical market is predicted (reaching double figures). Alongside disposable filter capsules, membrane chromatography units, tubing, connectors, flexible containers processing or containing...

I am very pleased to present this volume on engineering stem cells in Advances in Biochemical Engineering and Biotechnology. This volume stays abreast of recent developments in stem cell biology and the high expectations concerning the dev- opment of stem cell based regenerative therapies. Regenerative medicine is the focus of current biomedical research, with unique challenges related to scientific, technical and ethical issues of stem cell research, and the potential added value of connecting biomedicine with enabling techno- gies such as materials sciences, mechanical- and...

It is our pleasure to present this special volume on tissue engineering in the series Advances in Biochemical Engineering and Biotechnology. Thisvolume re?ects the emergence of tissue engineering as a core discipline of modern biomedical engineering, and recognizes the growing synergies between the technological developments in biotechnology and biomedicine. Along this vein, the focusof thisvolume istoprovide abiotechnology driven perspective on cell engineering fundamentals while highlighting their signi?cance in p- ducing functional tissues. Our aim is to present an overview of the state of...