Nanotechnology for New Organs

As I was looking around on the web for something about the GI tract, I ran across this article that was published in the Scientific American a couple years ago. Having just completed the device design project and the kidney/liver being major focuses of study this semester, I decided to read into it.

This article discusses exciting new techniques being used in tissue engineering. For some time now, skilled researchers have been able to grow skin and other membranous tissues in the lab with much success. However, trying to physically create a normal, functioning internal organ (like a kidney) outside of the body has had many obstacles that haven’t allowed for much progress. Apparently, the sheer size of these organs have created problems with supplying the growing tissue with adequate nutrients for normal metabolic needs. Therefore, in order to be able to grow these organs on the typical tissue scaffolding, there must be some kind of vascular support to the tissues. A novel technique has been proposed by researchers from MIT and Harvard to create a microscopic device to deliver nutrients to the tissue. Nano-scale networks in silicone sheets act as scaffolding in which some kind of microporous membrane takes form (much like the materials that the ICMO teams worked with). These networks have been combined with the normal tissue engineering processes and much success has followed. In fact, these artificially created livers have successfully worked in rats for an entire week – and that’s just for starters. These positive results have implications that could more directly focus this field of research for the decades to come and solve the organ shortage with an exclamation point.