Background

The Centre for Tissue Engineering (CTE) is a scientific, not-for-profit center of the Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria, and was founded in 2002 to facilitate the provision of next generation biomaterial therapies, including collagen ­based biomaterials and bone inducing growth factors, and tissue banked bone derived products and cells of uniform high quality in quantities sufficient to meet national needs. The Centre for Tissue Engineering has been sponsored and co-founded by Bone SA, the leading supplier of allograft bone in SA for more than a decade.

­Society has long recognized the medical and humanitarian value of donating and transplanting organs and tissues. The Centre for Tissue Engineering operates in terms of all relevant Government legislation, and endeavors to maintain a safe and adequate supply of its products for tissue engineering, whilst keeping pace with rapid technological advances characteristic of this field.

Standards and Accreditation

The Centre for Tissue Engineering adopts standards to ensure that its operations meet acceptable norms of technical and ethical performance, and uses procedures which foster ethical and responsible approaches to recovery, processing, preservation, and distribution of transplantable tissue and tissue derived products. Specifics include: screening for HIV and hepatitis and other transmissible diseases, donor selection criteria, required testing, record­keeping, maintenance of asepsis, labeling, and storage. CTE operates under Good Manufacturing Practice and Good Laboratory Practice standards, and its staff is quality certified and adequately trained to deliver the quality required of its products. The CTE has in major part adopted standards published by the American Association for Tissue Banking, and the International Atomic Energy Agency in all of its levels of function. It is also a member o f the European Association of Tissue Banks as well as the South African Transplant Society.

In its efforts to help maintain tissue engineering and tissue banking at the highest level of quality, the CTE has in June 2006 acquired the much acclaimed ISO 9001:2000 accreditation for retrieval, processing and supply of allograft tissue for human transplantation.
Centre for Tissue Engineering