Organ transplantation is now a well-established procedure for the treatment of end-stage organ failure due to various causes, but is a victim of its own success in that there is a growing disparity in numbers between the donor organ pool available for transplantation and the patients eligible for such a procedure; hence, an alternative solution to the limited donor organ pool is both desirable and necessary. Tissue engineering is an interdisciplinary field that applies the principles of engineering and life sciences toward the development of functional replacement tissues for clinical use. A recent innovation in tissue and organ engineering is the technique of whole-organ decellularization, which allows the production of complex three-dimensional extracellular matrix (ECM) bioscaffolds of the entire organ with preservation of the intrinsic vascular network. These bioscaffolds can then be recellularized to create potentially functional organ constructs as a regenerative medicine strategy for organ replacement. We review the current applications and methods in using xenogeneic whole-organ ECM scaffolds to create potentially functional bioartificial organ constructs for surgical implantation, and present a comparison of specific trends within this new and developing technique.
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