Figure 1. Bottom-up vs. top-down approaches in tissue engineering.

The traditional, top-down approach (right) involves seeding cells into full sized porous scaffolds to form tissue constructs. This approach poses many limitations such as slow vascularization, diffusion limitations, low cell density and non-uniform cell distribution. In contrast, the modular or bottom-up approach (left) involves assembling small, non-diffusion limited, cell-laden modules to form larger structures and has the potential to eliminate the shortcomings of the traditional approach.