"The technology" is much, much, less known than you think it is - the reality of this line of work is that no one really has a clue what's going on. Every "tried and true" method of doing anything in biology has its major drawbacks, and so far no combination of techniques has covered all the gaps in knowledge. We've sequenced the human genome - now what? We can make artificial capillaries with weak stability that don't truly resemble anything in the human body, and which many other labs across the world have similarly done; now what? Organic tissue is so much more vastly complicated than a few VEGF-induced differentiated cells in a collagen matrix, and the fact that Slashdot makes this major news shows that most people buy the hype. (By the way, every term in "VEGF-induced differentiated cells in a collagen matrix" is debatable.)
Of course, hype is needed for us researchers to get funding so we can figure this stuff out. But I assure you, unless some major revolutions are made in the way biomedical engineering research is done, we're beating a dead horse that is not going to cough up the real answers.
Just so you know, device biocompatibility (basically ensuring that the body won't freak out when you do something like input nanobots) has been a 50 year issue. There aren't many solutions - at best, current devices get encapsulated in fibrous tissue and attacked with random oxidative chemicals. Your nanobots are likely to get eaten by white blood cells and harmed within low pH peroxisomes.
This is related to my work as a bioengineer, so I feel compelled to comment on it.
This is interesting stuff, basically using PDMS patterning to induce channels through which progenitor cells can be used to induce endothelial cell formation, and then they talk about using Matrigel (a collagen-based gel) with these blood vessels that form, but there are a bunch of "this can't be really used for anything" problems:
1) They used VEGF, which induces blood vessels everywhere you put it. So this is not really novel. There've been a ton of papers showing this. The problem with VEGF is that the vessels formed aren't really stable, and they don't last.
2) Your blood vessels, at least the larger ones, have a lot more structure than what they're indicating. You need smooth muscle cells and fibroblasts to form the rest of the vessel. They haven't done that here.
3) You still haven't really addressed the biocompatibility issue for implantation or any sort of real world implementation.
Robert Langer is considered by many to be a father of bioengineering, but that doesn't mean every paper he does is going to be awesome.
Slashdot Mirror
"The technology" is much, much, less known than you think it is - the reality of this line of work is that no one really has a clue what's going on. Every "tried and true" method of doing anything in biology has its major drawbacks, and so far no combination of techniques has covered all the gaps in knowledge. We've sequenced the human genome - now what? We can make artificial capillaries with weak stability that don't truly resemble anything in the human body, and which many other labs across the world have similarly done; now what? Organic tissue is so much more vastly complicated than a few VEGF-induced differentiated cells in a collagen matrix, and the fact that Slashdot makes this major news shows that most people buy the hype. (By the way, every term in "VEGF-induced differentiated cells in a collagen matrix" is debatable.)
Of course, hype is needed for us researchers to get funding so we can figure this stuff out. But I assure you, unless some major revolutions are made in the way biomedical engineering research is done, we're beating a dead horse that is not going to cough up the real answers.
Just so you know, device biocompatibility (basically ensuring that the body won't freak out when you do something like input nanobots) has been a 50 year issue. There aren't many solutions - at best, current devices get encapsulated in fibrous tissue and attacked with random oxidative chemicals. Your nanobots are likely to get eaten by white blood cells and harmed within low pH peroxisomes.
Just a thought....
This is related to my work as a bioengineer, so I feel compelled to comment on it.
This is interesting stuff, basically using PDMS patterning to induce channels through which progenitor cells can be used to induce endothelial cell formation, and then they talk about using Matrigel (a collagen-based gel) with these blood vessels that form, but there are a bunch of "this can't be really used for anything" problems:
1) They used VEGF, which induces blood vessels everywhere you put it. So this is not really novel. There've been a ton of papers showing this. The problem with VEGF is that the vessels formed aren't really stable, and they don't last.
2) Your blood vessels, at least the larger ones, have a lot more structure than what they're indicating. You need smooth muscle cells and fibroblasts to form the rest of the vessel. They haven't done that here.
3) You still haven't really addressed the biocompatibility issue for implantation or any sort of real world implementation.
Robert Langer is considered by many to be a father of bioengineering, but that doesn't mean every paper he does is going to be awesome.