UK scientists grow complex body structures in lab
19 Jun 2015
UK scientists have made a major breakthrough which would allow lab-grown replacements for complex structures like knees and hips.
The scientists aimed to replace complex structures - like those found in hips and knee joints damaged by arthritis, in car crashes or on battlefields.
While scientists had successfully transplanted a lab-grown human windpipe measuring around three inches in 2011, bigger structures had posed challenges.
Now researchers at Bristol and Liverpool universities have developed a method that would let them overcome a major hurdle. The problem with creating larger cartilage structures involved supply of oxygen to the engineered cells.
In the body, the bloodstream supplied oxygen, but in the lab the cells relied on getting oxygen from the solution they were being grown in.
Larger structures failed to get the oxygen they needed, as a result of which the cartilage cells died. The researchers created stem cells with a built-in 'oxygen reservoir' - a protein called myoglobin - which was turned into cartilage.
Dr Adam Perriman, from Bristol's School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, said, "It's like supplying each cell with its own scuba tank, which it can use to breathe from when there is not enough oxygen in the local environment."
The researchers found that cells could be combined with an oxygen-carrying protein to produce living tissue in the laboratory. They hope that this could be implanted into patients to replace diseased parts of the body.
The research had shown that it was possible to combine cells with a special scaffold to produce living tissue in the laboratory.
When larger structures failed to get the oxygen they need the cartilage cells die off. The team led by Dr Adam Perriman from the University of Bristol and Professor Anthony Hollander from the University of Liverpool used cartilage tissue engineering to overcome the oxygen limitation problem.
This new methodology could pave the way for the development of a wide range of new biotechnologies, according to commentators. The research ha been published in Nature Communications.
