Researchers Discover Process to Grow Human Cells in the Lab
By Regina Sass
Published Oct 08, 2007
In another case of life imitating science fiction, researchers at
Cornell University are talking about a time in the not too distant
future where there will be laboratories devoted to growing
synthetically manufactured body tissues like muscle or cartilage that
will be ready for transplants when they are needed.
They have been able to engineer tiny channels in a water-based gel
that they designed to imitate the body's system of blood vessels, but
at the cellular level. It has the capability to supply cells with
oxygen and the essential nutrients and growth factors. Picture if you
will, not a flat surface, but a three-dimensional scaffold made out
the gel that has the capacity to hold tens of millions of cells in
every milliliter that act like a template to form the cells as they
grow.
The main roadblock that the engineers had to overcome to bring this
to fruition was the fact that it has always been impossible to feed
the cells right in their core. Fortunately, they found the solution
to be a simple one, at least for an engineer to figure out. When they
embedded the gel version of a microvascular system, they were able to
feed the core.
The microchannels are what make it possible for fluid that contains
oxygen, sugar and proteins to reach the whole system. They also have
the capability to control the distribution of the nutrient rich
fluids as they wish in relation to both time and space in the tissues
as they are developing. This allows them to fine tune the cells'
environment. An example they use of this is the fact that they many
need to have the tissue develop into bone on one side and cartilage
on the other. By having this degree of control, they can give the
bone side what it needs and the cartilage side what it needs to grow
properly.
There is still along way to go. They need to find a source of cells
that they can harvest from the patient and be able to grow them
without accidentally altering any of the cells' characteristics. So
far they have been able to make stem cells derived cartilage, but it
is not functional.
As the researchers develop new tools, they hope at first be able to
use the tissues in non clinical trials in animals to test drugs and
chemicals. And then hopefully be able to move to being able to grow
implants from the patients own tissues, which would eliminate the
biggest problem in transplant surgery, organ rejections.
The senior author of the report is Abraham Stroock, Cornell assistant
professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and co author is
Lawrence Bonassar, a Cornell associate professor of biomedical
engineering.
The research was funded by the Office of Naval Research, Cornell's
Nanobiotechnology Center, Beckman Foundation, the Center for Life
Science Enterprise at Cornell and the Cornell Center for Materials
Research.
Source: Cornell University http://www.news.
http://www.associat
rocess_to_grow.
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StemCells subscribers may also be interested in these sites:
Children's Neurobiological Solutions
http://www.CNSfoundation.org/
Cord Blood Registry
http://www.CordBlood.com/at.cgi?a=150123
The CNS Healing Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNS_Healing
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