3D tissue grown using cell phone tech

Date: Jul-19-2013Researchers have taken technology from makers of mobile phones and other consumer electronics and used it to grow 3D tissue.

Scientists at the Draper Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a prototype using an automated "layer-by-layer" assembly method - usually found within the electronics packing industry to build integrated circuits. Their work is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Instead of building mobile phones, this technology has been used to stack "porous, flexible, biodegradable elastomer sheets," which the researchers have used to create 3D scaffolds on which tissues can be grown.

Lisa Freed, of Draper Laboratory and MIT, says that this new technology could be implemented to encourage growth or regrowth of certain tissues in people suffering from congenital defects or serious damage to tissues and organs.

The scientists say the 3D device will allow them to build controlled "3D pore networks" that guide cells to grow in precise patterns, in the way that highly specialized tissues such as heart and skeletal muscle grow.

The 3D scaffolds will enable scientists to grow fully functional tissue by allowing cells to grow in precise patterns. Photo credit: MIT.

"Cells in a human heart rely on a variety of spatial and chemical cues to form the hierarchical organization that results in a complete and functional organ," the researchers say. To ensure the cells grew in these precise patterns, the scientists had to identify "key structural cues" that they could replicate in the lab.

Having developed their 3D scaffolding technique, the research team was able to grow contractile heart tissue from rat heart cells.

The scaffolds are flexible enough, the researchers say, to be implanted directly into an injured part of the body in order to guide cellular growth at that site.

Lisa Freed says:

"Scaffolds that guide 3D cellular arrangements can enable the fabrication of tissues large enough to be of clinical relevance, and now we have developed a new tool to help do this."

Biomedical researchers could also use these scaffolds to their advantage in order to study tissue development, the study authors say.

It is thought that this new technology will mark a big improvement on current methods of repairing and growing human organs. Prior to this innovation, researchers relied on 2D templates, amorphous gelatin, or 3D pore structures that were unable to focus on a particular area of growth.

The researchers hope this technology will assist researchers in exploring new treatments and research possibilities.

Martha Lundberg, a program director at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), says of the research:

"This work could be a potentially significant advance in tissue engineering that will lead to new tissue-based therapies aimed at restoring organ function."

Written by Honor Whiteman

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