Researchers have succeeded in developing a new method for growing human tissue outside the human body. Their human-on-a-chip technology, known as the AngioChip, is a powerful means of discovering and testing new drugs, and could eventually be used to repair or replace damaged organs.
![These tiny polymer scaffolds include channels 100 micrometers wide, about the width of a human hair. When live cells are added to the content, the channels serve as artificial blood vessels. By mimicking human tissues of organs such as liver and heart, these scaffolds provide an innovative method for testing new drugs with the aim of reducing their dangerous side effects. [Courtesy: Tyler Irving/Boyang Zhang/Kevin Soobrian]](https://www.hayadan.org.il/images/content3/2016/03/Graphic-031-500x333.jpg)
[Translation by Dr. Nachmani Moshe]
Researchers have succeeded in developing a new method for growing human tissue outside the human body. Their human-on-a-chip technology, known as the AngioChip, is a powerful means of discovering and testing new drugs, and could eventually be used to repair or replace damaged organs.
Professor Milica Radisic, along with her research team at the University of Toronto, are part of a multitude of research groups around the world competing with each other in order to develop new methods for growing human tissues in the laboratory, under conditions that mimic as accurately as possible the conditions that exist in the human body. The researchers were able to develop unique methods to create tiny and complex scaffolds on which the cells grow. Such artificial environments give rise to cells and tissues that are very similar to human systems, where the products are much closer to the human condition than those grown in petri dishes.
As part of their research, the scientists developed an innovative method for growing heart cells around a silk suture, as well as a scaffold that allows heart cells to cluster together similar to the adhesion of two Velcro sheets. However, their new method advances the field of tissue engineering to a completely new level. "Our products are fully XNUMXD structures that also include the blood vessels," says the lead researcher. "Our product behaves exactly like a complete vascular system, when surrounded by a network on top of which additional cells can gather and grow." The research findings have long been published in the scientific journal Nature Materials.
The researchers created the scaffold based on the polymer POMaC, which is a polymer that is biologically compatible with the human body and also one that is able to break down within it after a specified period of time. The scaffold is made of a series of thin layers, which are grooved by patterns of channels whose width is 100-50 micrometers. The arrays of layers, similar to a kind of computer microchips, are stacked in the next step to form a XNUMXD structure of artificial blood vessels. As each layer is added to the one below it, ultraviolet light irradiation causes the polymer to crosslink and bond to the one below. When the structure is ready, it is immersed in a solution that includes living cells. The cells quickly adhere to the inner and outer parts of the canals and there they begin to grow, just as happens in the human body. "In the past, researchers were only able to do this with the help of devices that press the cells between sheets of silicon and glass," says the researcher. "For this, a number of pumps and vacuum tubes were needed, designed to create only one chip. Our system uses a normal Petri dish with normal cells, and therefore there is no need to use pumps and complex equipment; In addition, in terms of accessibility, you can easily get to the tissue."
Using their system, the researchers were able to build model versions of heart and liver tissue that functioned exactly like human cells. "Our liver produces urea and substances that break down drugs," says the researcher. Our system is able to connect the blood vessels of these two artificial organs, thus serving as a model not only as the organs themselves, but also as a model for the mutual relations between them. The researchers were even able to inject white blood cells into the blood vessels and see them accumulate in the blood vessel walls, just as happens in the human body. Our system has great potential in the field of drug testing. Existing methods for drug testing, such as clinical trials and controlled clinical trials, are expensive and involve ethical problems. Testing drugs inside human tissue grown in the lab would provide a realistic model at a fraction of the cost, despite the fact that this field is still in its infancy. "In recent years, the possibility of ordering cultures of human cells for experiments has been developing, but these are grown in a dish, in a two-dimensional environment," explains the lead researcher. "These cells do not contain all the functional properties of, for example, a real heart muscle."
A more realistic system, like the innovative AngioChip system, could allow pharmaceutical companies to detect side effects and dangerous effects long before the drugs reach the market, saving many lives. In addition, the system could also be used for understanding and validating the effectiveness of existing drugs, and even for scanning collections of chemical compounds in order to discover new drugs. In the future, the researchers hypothesize that it will be possible to implant the system in the body's drum in order to repair organs damaged by diseases. In light of the fact that the cells used in the system can come from any human source, the new tissues can be genetically identical to the transplanted one, thus reducing the risk of transplanted organ rejection. Even in its current initial form, the team demonstrated how the system can be implanted in a live animal when the artificial blood vessels are connected to the real blood system. The polymer scaffold itself simply breaks down in the body after a few months.
These tiny polymer scaffolds include channels 100 micrometers wide, about the width of a human hair. When live cells are added to the content, the channels serve as artificial blood vessels. By mimicking human tissues of organs such as liver and heart, these scaffolds provide an innovative method for testing new drugs with the aim of reducing their dangerous side effects. [Courtesy: Tyler Irving/Boyang Zhang/Kevin Soobrian]
The team still has a lot of work planned - every system is currently manufactured manually; In order for the system to be used in industry, the team will have to develop mass production methods to produce many systems quickly. And despite all these bumps - the great potential of the system is obvious. "Our system is truly a multi-functional system, and it solves many problems in the field of tissue engineering," says the lead researcher.
5 תגובות
Because the researchers started working on this idea quite a few years ago, they use lithography technology. Now that there is XNUMXD printing, the appropriate matrices can be built with great precision and speed - when each such matrix is produced in a precise way specific to each organ and each animal, in terms of precision and placement of the required scaffolds, with a variety of polymers.
An important question is whether evolution chose limited life by natural selection or this is what came out. If she chose, by adjusting self-destruction mechanisms such as the telomeres (the body's time clocks), then this is a result of natural selection. There are good things in the absence of eternal life. It's a healthy mechanism to reshuffle the cards or reroll the dice. There have been humane extinctions and improved species have emerged from them. Think of brutal tyrants who would never die. The entire universe exists because it is dynamic and its entropy is still low enough and can grow. During life we are mentally scratched and tired.
Suppose we have eternal life. So Beethoven could compose another divine symphony but on the other hand Hitler could not die. But what is it? Technology cannot be stopped, so life extension will come. Except that if it is not evolutionary correct, natural selection will come and exterminate it. 60 million years, or 5,000 years they were there in universe terms.
sounds interesting. Even 50 years is a blink of an eye. Not for us but for humanity.
Growing organs for transplantation in the laboratory (an embryo that will be suitable for the patient so that there will be no rejections and no need to suppress the immune system) will be a big step towards eternal life.
Of course, there will be many more problems to solve (it will not be possible to transplant a brain, so they will continue to die from Letzheimer
How many more years do you think it will take until there will be almost no organ transplants from a living or dead donor and there will only be organs created in a laboratory?