Metal Nano-Particles Suspend Human Cells In Magnetic Scaffolding For Easy Organ Manufacturing

Image: Cells Floating In a Magnetic Field: Nano3D Biosciences, via Technology Review

From Popular Science:

While scientists have become rather adept at transforming generic skin cells into specialized organ cells, crafting the organs themselves has proven far more difficult. Since the 3-D architecture of most organs is as important to their function as their cellular makeup, 2-D cell cultures are not very useful for building a replacement heart from scratch. To solve that problem, most organ makers create a scaffolding for the cells to grow on.

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Healing Touch: The Key To Regenerating Bodies

From New Scientist:

YOU started life as a single cell. Now you are made of many trillions. There are more cells in your body than there are stars in the galaxy. Every day billions of these cells are replaced. And if you hurt yourself, billions more cells spring up to repair broken blood vessels and make new skin, muscle or even bone.

Even more amazing than the staggering number of cells, though, is the fact that, by and large, they all know what to do - whether to become skin or bone and so on. The question is, how?

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Spinal Cord Regeneration Enabled By Stabilizing, Improving Delivery Of Scar-degrading Enzyme

Image showing the extent of new nerves (green) that regenerated after treatment with the enzyme. (Credit: Image courtesy of Ravi Bellamkonda)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 5, 2009) — Researchers have developed an improved version of an enzyme that degrades the dense scar tissue that forms when the central nervous system is damaged. By digesting the tissue that blocks re-growth of damaged nerves, the improved enzyme -- and new system for delivering it -- could facilitate recovery from serious central nervous system injuries.

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Humans Could Regrow Their Own Body Parts Like Some Amphibians, Claim Scientists

From The Telegraph:

Regenerating your own amputated arms and legs, broken spines and even damaged brains is the stuff of superheroes - but it could one day be a reality, claim scientists.

Researchers looking into how salamanders are able to to regrow their damaged bodies have discovered that the "almost magical ability" is closer to human healing then first thought.

They believe that one day they will be able to completely unlock the secret and apply it to humans, reprogramming the body so it can repair itself perfectly as if nothing had happened.

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How To Grow New Organs

Image: "Microfabrication Of Three-Dimensional Engineered Scaffolds," By Jeffrey T. Borenstein, Eli J. Weinberg, Brian K. Orrick, Cathryn Sundback, Mohammad R. Kaazempur-Mofrad And Joseph P. Vacanti, In TISSUE ENGINEERING, Vol. 13, No. 8; 2007

From Scientific American:

Pioneers in building living tissue report important advances over the past decade.

Key Concepts

* Efforts to build living tissue replacements have progressed over the past decade, and some simple engineered tissues are already used in humans.
* Advances have come from a greater understanding of cell behavior and sophisticated new building materials.
* More tissue-engineered products are close to commercial readiness but must undergo the complex regulatory scrutiny given to living materials.

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DARPA At Phase 2 On Human 'Regeneration' Tech

Image from It's Just Cool

From The Register:

Famed US military mad-professor bureau DARPA has inked a second deal with Massachusetts researchers to develop ways of "regenerating" human body tissues cut, shot or blown off in combat. The new biotech therapies would employ the same methods used by newts in growing replacement limbs.

News of the award comes courtesy of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), which announced the $570,000 agreement between DARPA and WPI-spawned company CellThera yesterday. CellThera is expected to work with the university's bioengineering department in delivering Phase II of DARPA's "restorative injury repair" programme.

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Pentagon Plan to Regrow Limbs: Phase One, Complete

(Click the Image to Enlarge)

From Danger Room:

The first phase of the Pentagon's plan to regrow soldiers' limbs is complete; scientists managed to turn human skin into the equivalent of a blastema — a mass of undifferentiated cells that can develop into new body parts. Now, researchers are on to phase two: turning that cellular glop into a square inch of honest-to-goodness muscle tissue.

The Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) just got a one-year, $570,000 grant from Darpa, the Pentagon's blue-sky research arm, to grow the new tissues. "The goal is to genuinely replace a muscle that's lost," biotechnology professor Raymond Page tells Danger Room. "I appreciate that's a very aggressive goal." And it's only one part in a larger, even more ambitious Darpa program, Restorative Injury Repair, that aims to "fully restore the function of complex tissue (muscle, nerves, skin, etc.) after traumatic injury on the battlefield."

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