Tissue Engineering

Filed in archive Biotech on July 24, 2008

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Aaliya Landholt

Wouldn't it be great if we could just grow new organs? It sounds like science fiction if you could grow a new kidney and transplant that organ. Bioengineers are working aggressively to re-create human tissues by growing cells and looking for a way to assemble the cells into a complex organ. Researchers have discovered a way to make living cells self-assemble like building blocks. This type of self-assembly may ultimately lead to blood vessels and other complex structures. Ali Khademhosseini, a bioengineer at Harvard Medical School, is working on more-complex self-assembling structures found in the liver, pancreas, and heart. Source: Technology Review