Regenerative Surgery is an interdisciplinary field of research and clinical applications aiming to repair, replace, or regenerate tissues or organs, with the goal of restoring loss of function due to congenital defects, diseases, damage/trauma or aging. This rapidly emerging field does not focus on long established classical forms of surgery such as removing carcinomas or splinting broken bones, but on regenerative intervention.

Within the DBE framework, the Regenerative Surgery Focal Area integrates surgical and regenerative medicine research groups specialized in the development of new technologies for the engineering of tissue grafts and for surgical manipulation of the implantation site. In addition to research activities directly aimed at clinical applications, the focal area also develops 3D culture systems as in vitro model systems to study tissue/tumor biology. Application fields are as various as skeletal tissues (e.g., bone, cartilage, intervertebral disk, maxillo-facial), the peripheral nervous system, and muscle.

Research in this focal area involves highly interdisciplinary activities in biological, engineering, and pharmaceutical sciences. It is linked in many ways with technologies developed within other focal areas at DBE like Imaging Modeling & Diagnosis, the Core Facility 3D Print Lab or the laser cutting facilities.