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NASA/MIT Can Successfully Grow Human Tissue
mathowie writes "[MIT] scientists use a NASA-developed device in a first step towards tissue engineering. The cell constructs are less than 1/5-inch across, but represent a significant step in developing replacement parts for damaged organs.
Need a heart? No problem! You say you're short one kidney? Heck we can get one for you! With technology like this, I really should take up smoking, if I ever need a lung, someone can grow one for me. " I have someone close to me who has a weak heart - advancements like this will make a huge difference in the future.
I've been interning this past year with a bunch of grad students and professors who do just this: Tissue Engineering. I'd have to say that Tissue Engineering is a not that new, contrary to what the article says. Both Organogenesis and American Tissue Sciences (two companies who deal in Skin & other Tissue engineering) have created layers of epidermal skin for use with burn patients. Skin is an organ, complete with its own tissue layers.
The article might just be hyping up some new technique or method in Tissue engineering. The "first step" has already been taken and tissue engineering is already a reality.
Now, artificial organs like hearts, lungs, kidneys will definately be harder to synthetically create from cells than skin. There are many obstacles toward creating these synethic organs. The cells must properly differentiate into the functional groups of each organ. The scaffold the cells are seeded on will need to mimic the structure of the natural organ, including spaces for capillaries for blood flow, microtubules for the various secretions, excretions, and inputted fluids. In order to create an artificial kidney, you would need to structurally induce a flow from ingoing blood and allow outgoing blood an outlet.
There's also the problem of seeding the scaffold with cells. You can't seed every bit of the scaffold with cells and the cells won't necessarily move on their own. In fact, cells really don't like to attach to most synthetic scaffolds. You need to coat it with a protein like collagen or fibronectin, which are extracellular proteins within the body.
Overall, Tissue Engineering will soon provide humans the ability to replace dead organs..or create new organs from partial organs. Skin is already in production while other organs are more complex, and will probably not be seen for perhaps 5-10 years.
Howard
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Oh, good, so perhaps, soon, getting knocked out in a dark alley, and waking up in a tub full of icewater and stiches on one's side will be a thing of the past....
mark (B-{)}
I don't know a lot about tissue regeneration, but my sister used to work for a company called Genzyme, first doing tissue repair, and then cartilage repair. Is this a lot different then this?
Here's a link to Genzyme's tissue repair page. This by any means is a very interesting subject, but I think the Genzyme has been doing this for at least 5 years now.
If I remember correctly this Boston branch used to be a company called BioSurface that was an MIT company at one point until they got bought out by Genzyme.
---
"Everybody knows the moon's made of cheese," Wallace.
AngryMob dun said:
In some cases, yes...in most cases of genetic diseases an organ transplant will do exactly Jack and Shite, because most genetic diseases are from complex inborn errors of metabolism. (To tie onto another thread here, the infant euthanasia one--I seriously doubt organ-growing clinics are going to help kids with fatal degenerative brain diseases like Tay-Sach's or ALD (adrenoleukodystrophy--the "Lorenzo's Oil" disease) or chromosomal disorders like inversions and trisomies/monosomies, because even WITH organ-growing clinics it's going to be a long time, if ever, before we can grow a baby a new brain [and you could seriously argue that in that case you're not so much giving a dying child a new brain as giving a new intelligence a donated body, if one sees the essence of "what makes me, me" as centered in the brain]...and in the case of most of your really bad genetically-based brain diseases (like most of your brain degenerative diseases that do not involve the actual chromosomes fucking up in replicating themselves) you will have to repeat the process every so often because the brain gets destroyed by toxic byproducts the body can't remove because of a farged-up metabolism. This is also true in most cases of muscular dystrophy [you are either going to have to do a transplant of ALL the muscles in someone's body, or replace ALL the mitochondria in their body [a really surprising number of forms of muscular dystrophy are inherited NOT by one's chromosomal genes but are actually genetic diseases of one's mitochondria--a "Parasite Eve" sort of situation would not mutate one so much as probably leave one unable to move and probably brain damaged to boot].)
For that matter, let's take the example you noted above--diabetes. (I happen to have a personal interest in the genetics of diabetes and other disorders of glucose metabolism. I happen to be from a family of which I am one of maybe four or five people in a large extended kindred who does not yet have something wonky going on with my glucose metabolism [hypoglycemia or diabetes]; in my family it's also been shown that hypoglycemia and diabetes are related, and we've actually been asked to join in genetic studies because we're a glucose-metabolism-disorder cluster.) There are two main types of diabetes mellitus ("sugar diabetes"--there is another kind of diabetes, diabetes insipidus, which is due to inappropriate secretion of diuretic hormones from one's pituitary gland and is not related at all other than being yet another endocrine disorder; both are named diabetes because a major symptom of both is one has to pee a lot :)--type 1, which usually hits from birth to one's twenties, and type 2 which hits from about the late 20's onward and is associated with obesity.
There is a lot of evidence to point to the fact that diabetes in general is inherited, and that certain populations [Native Americans and, if memory serves, Australian Aboriginals as well] have a much higher susceptibility to Type II diabetes because they essentially don't have the ability to handle refined sugars and carbohydrates as well as Europeans [it's the same reason Asians and some other folks have a high incidence of lactose intolerance--it's also been experimentally proven European diet is to blame at least among Pima peoples in the US Southwest, who have an unusually high incidence of Type II diabetes but tend NOT to have the problems when eating a traditional diet]. Type I diabetes tends to occur at roughly the same rate everywhere except in certain kindreds.
Type I diabetes is now pretty well known to be an autoimmune disorder in which somehow the body is tricked into destroying its own Islet cells; most research is pointing to viral infections being the main trigger, and several genes for Type I diabetes have been found. I honestly don't know what use a pancreas transplant would do long-term (there are the beginnings of clinical trials being done with Islet cell transplants); you might also have to replace their bone marrow to fix the underlying autoimmune disorder. (As an aside--some scientists now think something similar may also happen with Crohn's disease [a severe form of colitis that is sometimes associated with colon cancer] and with multiple sclerosis--since certain types of immune-system regulators DO relieve symptoms of the diseases. There are some clinical trials also being done in this vein with people in Type I diabetes "clusters" in an attempt to keep them from ever developing diabetes.)
Just as a minor aside--Type I diabetes used to be called "juvenile diabetes" but it does not just occur in juveniles--20- and 30-year-old people (and sometimes older) have spontaneously developed Type I diabetes. With this kind you have to take insulin shots--diet and/or "diabetes pills" will NOT control it, and if it is not controlled you WILL get desperately sick. The really bad kind of Type I where one has a devil of a time controlling blood glucose is sometimes known as "brittle diabetes". (My grandmother died of complications of late-onset Type I diabetes, so I know all too well that it ain't just kids who get it.) You could also prolly call this "Bret Michaels Disease" if one wants a nice celebrity spokesperson (Bret Michaels, formerly of the band Poison and now a movie director, has Type I diabetes and did a lot of spokespersoning for the American Diabetes Association in the 80's). :)
Type II diabetes is generally caused because one's body produces insulin normally but somehow one's body stops reacting to it normally. [The underlying mechanisms of this are still being figured out; in some cases it's a kind of autoimmune disorder where the body develops antibodies to insulin, in others there are other mechanisms.] A lot of times Type II diabetes can be controlled by diet or by losing weight [obesity is a MAJOR risk factor for Type II]; for those who can't, there are "diabetes pills" that basically help the body's own insulin work better. In cases where they get bad enough to require insulin, sometimes they have to receive massive doses. An organ transplant or "grow-your-own" probably would NOT work here (except, again, for those rare kinds of Type II where the body has antibodies to insulin) because it's more of a metabolic disorder that is still not entirely well understood.
There might be another type of diabetes yet-- in many cases that seem to fall between Type I and Type II diabetes, it's almost as if the Islet cells "burn out"--people tend to either become hypoglycemic, will go straight to diabetes, or will be hypoglycemic for some years before converting to full-blown diabetes (which may or may not be insulin-dependant). (This happens to be the particular variant that runs in my family, and may actually be some weird form of Type I diabetes.) I also don't know how an organ transplant or "grow-your-own" would help here; if it's like Type I you'd prolly need a bone marrow transplant too, and if it's due to some funky metabolic disorder that causes one's Islet cells to essentially be the equivalent of tiny insulin-producing Replicants there might be no cure other than constantly replacing them and carrying candies around [because it might be an underlying metabolic disorder].
Needless to say, though, "pancreas on a Petri dish" is not going to be a cure for diabetes anytime soon. :P
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
Something I don't think they made clear in the article is that most of the work that is being done nowadays is with undifferentiated progenitor/stem cells. In the article it sounds as if you are taking heart muscle cells or skin cells or whatever and getting them to position themselves in a static scaffold. This is what the very early work in the late 80s was, as proof of concept. The current work is done with some sort precursor to the cell type that you are interested in and an interactive, biodegradable scaffolding. A cell knows what it is and what it needs to turn into by its environment. The local chemical and protein signals for the tissue type you want are embedded in the scaffolding matrix, the cells adhere to them and decide "A-hah! I'm in the heart and need to be a cardiac cell". The scaffolding is usually made of the same material as resorbable sutures, the tissue eventually eats it after its own extracellular matrix has made it supperfluous.
The cells are refered to as either progenitor cells or stem cells take your pick. There is currently a debate over what makes a cell 'really' a stem cell or not that resembles the discussions of what *really* makes something GPL or not.
These cells do _not_ have to come from fetal tissue. Fetal tissue can be used and it can be argued that using it is better, but it's not necessary. Dr M. Vacanti of the University of Massachusetts is doing work with attempts at regrafting together severed rat spinal chords using progenitor nerve cells harvested from a nerve in the rat's own body.
The blood supply issue is also a matter of signalling. There are chemical calls that cells put out to request that blood vessels grow into their area and provide more food. This usually doesn't happen in tissue engineering because A. you didn't start out with blood vessel cells in the first place and B. you want the cells to grow so you've been feeding them all they can eat anyway. What's usually needed is to artificially add the appropriate signals. Remember the work on the anti-cancer proteins angiostatin and endostatin? D etangling these signals is being worked on.
There are some hospitals that are already looking forward to the time when these techniques are hammered out and publicly availavble by collecting undifferentiated cells from the placenta of newborns and freezing them for the day when the person they belong to may need replacement tissues. Then you get the 'fetal' cell advantage without having another baby get killed for it. If you're having a kid soon, you might ask if the local hospital does this.
As a side note about the start up smoking 'cause it can be replaced idea: Do you *really* want to have to have someone crack you open, rip out your lungs, replace them with custom constructs, and then bill you for all that? And you thought replacing your car's catalytic converter was an expensive inconvenience!
tech - "Hello this is the MS tech support line"
."
..er uh..I mean if your organs just stop for no reason all you have to do is try rebooting..then go ahead and reinstall them when that doesn't work"
caller - "yes...hello..uh my MS-MIT kidney just stopped working...I need help"
tech - "Uh..that's impossible sir...our MS-MIT Kidneys are the state of the art and don't just stop working...you must have other third-party organs that are not on the Organ compatibility list..or your sys-admin is incompetent"
caller - "Look..I just need some help... how do I get it restarted"
tech - "Okay lets see.. we need you to first replace all of your other organs with MS_MIT Organs.. make sure to look for the Windows logo on the box
caller (shouting with disbelief) "YOU MEAN I HAVE TO REPLACE ALL OF MY ORGANS WITH MICRSOFT ORGANS..."
tech - "Yes sir..We only support Bodies with all Microsoft organs...then you will have to re-install the kidney.. don't worry this is all very standard.. In the future when
caller - "gurrgle....gasp.." THUD
A process called "Rapid Prototyping" has a similar application. It works like this: A laser sketches a design, layer by layer on an epoxy solution, and the solution solidifies when the laser hits it. Layer by layer the object is made. You can check out http://nasarp.msfc.nasa.gov/ for NASA's rapid prototyping division. Well usually making artificial bones is a long evolving process, and requires weeks if not months of measuring and careful manufacturing.
With rapid prototyping one could have a program with a catalog or different bones with a selections of sizes. With even current x-ray and stereo photography have a computer render a bone and then having it rapid prototyped can be knocked down to under a weeks worth of work.
Bort
To everyone who's constantly dissing the space program as a waste of money, I say this:
"The Bioreactor was developed by NASA to simulate the weightless environment of space"
Space flight isn't just a luxury; it's a necessity. People who can't see that may need other means of persuasion; this is one of the better ones.
This is a tissue culture that grows in a mold.
This doesn't let us grow organs from scratch.
You have to have some differentiated cells in order to seed the culture. If you don't have a liver/kidney/... to begin with, you have nothing to work with.
You'd still have to piece an organ together, one tissue at a time. Just think of how many components are in the heart: valves, neural wiring (building a pacemaker from scratch'll be easy), and a nightmare of a vascular network...
What this does let us do is build individual components from scratch. Hole in your heart? This could make a patch for it (provided you're still alive). But certainly nothing more complex.
Sure, lots and lots of people 'dis' the space program as a waste of money. I mean, what possible practical purpose could it serve to send a couple of white guys to the moon? If NASA made commercials promoting their research, the way that plastic does, people might be aware that the space program has given us more than Tang and the "one small step..." quote. But instead, NASA has an image, for the most part, about being somewhat unconcerned with "real world" issues -- when they get paid attention to, it's for the large objects that they put into the sky or, more often, the malfunctioning of those large objects.
"Gee, Lois, seems to me that if they're spending billions in taxpayer money to put this thing in space, they oughta make sure the damn thing works."
So NASA gets perceived as being this giant sucking sound in the national budget, sales of freeze-dried "Astronaut ice cream" at the Air and Space Museum remain fairly constant, and most people don't see the long-term benefits of their research, or don't notice it when they do see them.
Ahh, civilization...
Hmmm.
Just a little thought:
In this world, most of the people in power (read: presidents, senators, Members or Parliament and so on and so forth) are actually old and male.
These people are also narrow-minded and intellectually challenged. Which is why funds for NASA and space exploration in general have been slooooooowly going down the drain for the past 20+ years.
Now that there is a (slim) hope of being able to grow brand new organs in outer space, do you think the same old and intellectually challenged people realize that, far from wasting taxpayer's money, space exploration is actually our best hope for the future? Do you think they'll start properly funding NASA?
Imagine this: a zero-gravity "organ factory" in a Lagrange point not far from earth, with new and improved space shuttles taking back its "output" to Earth, for the benefit of aging, drooling and filthy rich white male. Sounds like something straight out of William Gibson. Hey, we won't go to Mars -- just to the orbiting hospital.
Remember: you read it first on Slashdot. =)
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Um, did you miss the POINT of Jurassic Park? Given the choice...I'd rather have a zillion-polygon, curved-surface, bump-mapped, dynamically lit dinosaur in my virtual reality goggles than a REAL dinosaur standing on what was once my body but is not a bit of squishy pulp between its toes.
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You also sound a big like Kahn from the original Star Trek episode "improve a machine and you gain ten times...improve man and you gain a thousand fold". It may be true but it is a LOT easier to control computers than living organisms.
Before some wise guy spouts off about artificial intelligence, let me just say that anyone who thinks AI lifeforms (if they ever do exist) will not have some hard-wire kill switch like Data then you are completely nuts.
Remember...if it's smart enough to pass the Turing Test it's smart enough to know the answer to "How do I kill you?"
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Joe,
This is not a flame, but I think debating US technology policy based on confused and oversimplified opinion presented in television and film really misses the point. "Jurassic Park", "Star Trek", and "The Matrix" do not provide a basis for learned discourse on this matter. It's not "Cell", "Nature", or even some unknown doctoral thesis on bioethics, nor do I think we should consider them as such. Hell, I don't even think they were good fiction.
This is serious stuff, the benefits of which could save my father's (and countless others') life. I completely support the research and use of biotechnology for medical gain, given that I have a vested interest in the survival of a loved family member.
There are two great things about being able to grow tissue: first, it will alleviate the lack of organ (and tissue) donorship; no more looong waitinglists (during which some people die for a lack of an organ) and no black market for organs. Second, by growing tissue from your own cells, there is no problem with rejection -- it's your own cells.
The problem lies with all those conditions where the organ defect is due to gentical factors. If you have a bad heart due to a genetic disease, the newly grown heart will tend to be susceptible to the same disease that destroyed the old one. Thus, the cells used to make an organ must be genetically altered to remove the condition. The problem is that many genetically transmitted diseases are complex and we have no idea how to repair that damage.
Disclaimer: I'm certainly no expert, take this comment for what it is...
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.