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Now, ”printer” that creates made-to-measure human organs

June 4, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

London, June 4 (ANI): Patients needing transplants would soon ask doctors to ”print” new organs for them, it has been claimed.

The California-based regenerative medicine company Organovo has already unveiled a prototype machine capable of growing new arteries.

Company bosses believe the technology could be used to create new organs.

The machine is based on 3D laser printing technology used to make new machine parts for industry.

But instead of combining layers of plastic and metal, the “bioprinter” puts together living tissue.

Two laser-based printing heads are used to place living cells onto thin sheets of gel with microscopic precision.

Thereafter, multiple layers are laid on top of each other in a specially designed “scaffold” and the cells begin to fuse together.

“Ultimately the idea would be for surgeons to have tissue on demand for various uses,” the Telegraph quoted Organovo”s chief executive Keith Murphy, as saying.

Murphy added: “The best way to do that is get a number of bio-printers into the hands of researchers and give them the ability to make three dimensional tissues on demand.” (ANI)

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Body-piercing ritual at Kochi Temple

March 31, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Kochi, Mar. 31 (ANI): Devotees at Kerala’s Aaryyankavu Bhagwathi Temple have devised a new way of performing the banned ancient Thookkam, or body-piercing ritual.

In the original Thookam ritual, the back of the person willing to perform the ritual is pierced with sharp hooks and lifted up to a height of over 30 feet on a scaffold, before the bleeding victim is brought down and hooks taken out.

However, the new method doesn’t require the devotee to be hung or lifted.

“After a court put a ban on the ancient ritual of multiple body-piercing and hanging from rope, now only single piercing is done in the body and the person just stands still and does not hang. The devotees also fast for 41 days,” said Shiv Raman, a temple committee member.

In 2004 – following a widespread protest by social activists and even Hindu priests – the practice was banned by a court.

The legend behind the ritual goes back to the ancient days. Legend has it that even after slaying the demon Darika, the Goddess Kali remained bloodthirsty.

Hindu god Lord Vishnu then sent his mount, the giant bird Garuda, to Kali. Garuda gave the goddess some drops of blood, which pacified her thirst.

The ritual is performed based on this belief. (ANI)

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Body fat could act as a natural scaffold for tissue growth

March 26, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 26 (ANI): When Deepak Nagrath, the Indian-origin researcher at Rice University, threw away the sticky substance secreted by the cells while finding ways to grow cells in a scaffold, little did he know that it was the very thing he was looking for— body fat.

The substance, derived from adipose cells—body fat—turned out to be a natural extracellular matrix.

“I thought it was contamination, so I threw the plates away,” said Nagrath.

And since then, Nagrath and his colleagues have built a biological scaffold that allows cells to grow and mature.

He hopes the new material, when suffused with stem cells, will someday be injected into the human body, where it can repair tissues of many types without fear of rejection.

And the basic idea is simple—prompt fat cells to secrete what bioengineers call “basement membrane.”

The membrane mimics the architecture tissues naturally use in cell growth, literally a framework to which cells attach while they form a network.

When the cells have matured into the desired tissue, they secrete another substance that breaks down and destroys the scaffold.

Structures that support the growth of living cells into tissues are highly valuable to pharmaceutical companies for testing drugs in vitro. Companies commonly use Matrigel, a protein mixture secreted by mouse cancer cells, but for that reason it can”t be injected into patients.

“Fat is one thing that is in excess in the body. We can always lose it,” said Nagrath.

The substance derived from the secretions, called Adipogel, has proven effective for growing hepatocytes, the primary liver cells often used for pharmaceutical testing.

“My approach is to force the cells to secrete a natural matrix,” he said.

The matrix is a honey-like gel that retains the natural growth factors, cytokines and hormones in the original tissue.

Nagrath is convinced that his strategy is ultimately the most practical for rebuilding tissue in vivo, and not only because it may cost significantly less than Matrigel.

“The short-term goal is to use this as a feeder layer for human embryonic stem cells. It”s very hard to maintain them in the pluripotent state, where they keep dividing and are self-renewing,” he said.

Once that goal is achieved, Adipogel may be just the ticket for transplanting cells to repair organs.

“You can use this matrix as an adipogenic scaffold for stem cells and transplant it into the body where an organ is damaged. Then, we hope, these cells and the Adipogel can take over and improve their functionality,” said Nagrath.

The research appeared last week in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal. (ANI)

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Bone Stem Cells can be used to mend damaged hips

March 20, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

London, Mar.20 (ANI): Bone stem cells could in future be used instead of bone from donors as part of an innovative new hip replacement treatment, according to scientists at the University of Southampton.

A team from the University’s School of Medicine believe that introducing a patient’s own skeletal stem cells into the hip joint during bone grafting would encourage more successful regrowth and repair.

The grafting technique is used to repair the thigh bone and joint during replacement (known as ”revision”) hip replacement therapy, a procedure in which surgeons introduce donor bone to the damaged area to provide support for the new hip stem.

In this collaborative study between the University of Southampton and The University of Nottingham, researchers will use adult stem cells from bone marrow in combination with an innovative impaction process and polymer scaffolds.

In a two-year study, funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC), researchers aim to improve the outcomes of this high impact procedure.

“Surgeons currently use bone from donors during bone grafting, so introducing a patient’s own stem cells to create a living cell or material composite would be a totally new approach,” comments Professor Richard Oreffo, an expert in musculoskeletal science at the University of Southampton, who is leading the project.

“This is very much the beginning of a project to investigate the potential for this new technique, but our preliminary work suggests this may have significant therapeutic implications.”

When a hip joint is damaged, part of the thigh bone or femur, including the ball, can be removed and a new, artificial joint fixed to the remaining thigh bone. Revision hip replacement occurs when that artificial joint needs to be changed.

Professor Oreffo will introduce the stem cells to the hip joint using a scaffold, or support structure, which is designed to protect them, and a new impaction process. The polymer scaffolds will be developed by Professors Steve Howdle and Kevin Shakesheff, experts in chemistry and tissue engineering at the University of Nottingham.

Professor Howdle explains: “Building upon strong collaborations with tissue engineering experts, this new grant will allow researchers at Nottingham to take their materials nearer to the clinic.

“This could have great benefits for patients, and also offer a significant cost saving for healthcare authorities; but first we need to verify and build upon our preliminary data.”

“A major part of the work at Nottingham will involve scaling up the supercritical fluid processing apparatus to create larger and more uniform batches of polymer scaffolds for testing.”

Dr Chris Watkins, MRC’s Translation Theme Leader, says: “Resilience, repair and replacement is a priority research area in the MRC’s strategic plan, ‘Research Changes Lives’. This study highlights how a regenerative approach can offer real hope in addressing a significant problem for an ageing population.”

This funding will allow the groups to build on initial studies that show that degradable polymer scaffolds prepared using supercritical carbon dioxide technology can have a dramatic effect on surgical procedures, such as inserting a hip implant in revision hip surgery.

The provisional studies carried out in Southampton show that the polymers can aid bone formation through the creation of a living cell/material composite and aid attachment of the hip implant.

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: adult stem cells, Bone Grafting, Bone marrow, collaborative study, femur, High-impact, hip replacement, Impaction, Medical Research Council, MRC, new approach, Polymer Scaffolds, professor richard, regrowth, scaffold, school of medicine, Support Structure, Therapeutic Implications, thigh bone, university of southampton

Natural hydrogel may boost spinal cord healing

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Sep 18 (ANI): A jab of biomaterial gel into a spinal cord injury site may significantly improve healing, according to researchers at the Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center.

Dr. Mark Preul and Dr. Alyssa Panitch have found in a study that injection of an engineered hydrogel made up mainly of hyaluronic acid (a naturally-occurring body substance) into the spinal cord injury site decreases scarring, and promotes a realignment of the spinal cord fibres around the injury site.

The hyaluronic acid, which forms a scaffold-like configuration may help to structurally stabilize the spinal cord injury site.

The researchers traced cells in the brain stem after injury, and found much higher levels in the hydrogel treated animals as compared to animals that did not receive the treatment, and approached nearly normal levels.

Treated animals had higher functional scores than their non-treated counterparts.

“Spinal cord injury is devastating to civilian and military populations – especially to the young. There has been little progress toward paradigms of regeneration and few results that show real, sustained functional recovery. We’ve been so pre-occupied with regeneration, but that is a highly complicated and difficult to define goal. This project is a synergy of neurosurgeons and bioengineers that attempts repair of the SCI lesion cavity using a tissue-engineering biomaterials approach,” says Preul.

He added that the team aimed at finding ways to structurally allow the body to better heal itself.

“In this project we did not add anything to the hyaluronic acid. It may be that adding growth factors or cells into the gel matrix may allow even better results,” he said.

Preul said that the results show “we may be on a practical path that can give hope to the many people who suffer this sort of injury.”

The work was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons in San Diego where it won the Synthes Prize for Spine Research. (ANI)

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How plant tissues know which end is their growing tip

August 30, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 30 (ANI): A team of scientists has silenced nine genes in a multicellular organism, which allowed them to discover molecular secrets of how certain plant tissues know which end is their growing tip, also referred to as polarized growth.

The research was carried out by biologist Magdalena Bezanilla and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, US.

The biologists conducted these experiments in a moss, but the findings illuminate processes in two tissues-root hairs and pollen tubes-found in all seed plants.

Root hairs are extremely fine individual cells that grow out of a plant’s root, greatly increasing its surface area to collect water, essential minerals and nutrients.

Pollen tubes travel down the flower to fertilize the plant’s egg.

Scientists have “a very limited knowledge” at the molecular level of how such cells determine the direction they’re growing, according to Bezanilla.

Knowing how to interrupt pollen tube formation in plants such as corn and soybeans, for example, could help prevent genetically engineered crops from interbreeding with wild populations.

Aiding root hair growth could boost drought-resistance to other economically important plants.he researchers focused on two proteins, actin and formin.

Actin, in this case a kind of scaffold-builder needed to form root hairs and pollen tubes, forms filamentous polymers and is important for many cellular processes in species ranging from yeast to man. ormins, like actin, are found in many species and help to control actin polymer formation. Formins are critical for actin-based cellular processes.

Tools in a biologist’s kit can now remove the function of specific proteins-usually one or two at a time-to silence a gene, but in this study, the researchers succeeded in silencing a remarkable nine genes at one time.

Bezanilla and colleagues systematically silenced the many actin-regulating formins and determined which members of this protein family are needed to generate cells for proper tip growth.ther tools in the researchers’ kit are methods for re-introducing the silenced genes, either normal or modified versions.

By “swapping parts” from closely related formin proteins and measuring tip growing activity for each combination, her research group eventually concluded that only one intact subclass of formins drives normal growth and controls how the plant recognizes its growing tip.

“If you take away any part of the formin, tip growth stops,” said Bezanilla.

Interestingly, the researchers also discovered that this particular subclass of formins is the fastest yet known in any organism. (ANI)

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Jelly thickener may help grow artificial muscles in future

July 14, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Melbourne, July 14 (ANI): In a novel study, Australian researchers are using food thickener used in yoghurts and jellies to develop artificial muscle.

Nanotechnology graduate Cameron Ferris, and supervisor Dr. Marc in het Panhuis, of the University of Wollongong, have developed a scaffold with the help of gellan gum-a biopolymer produced by the bacteria Pseudomonas elodea-that can help get cells to grow into the right kind of tissue.

“At home it’s used as a food additive. You’ll find it in lots of yoghurts and jellies as a thickener and emulsifier,” ABC Online quoted Ferris as saying.

Gellan gum is particularly useful because it becomes a gel at 37 degree Celsius, which is a good temperature for living cells, he adds.

Using the novel scaffold, the researchers are trying to develop artificial heart muscle that may soon be used to replace damaged parts of the heart in heart attacks patients.

“Muscle and heart need electrical stimulation for the cells to achieve their fully differentiated functioning state,” said Ferris.

To achieve this, Ferris has made a scaffold that mixes the gellan gum with carbon nanotubes, which conduct electricity.

To date, Ferris has successfully grown fibroblasts on his gellan gum and carbon nanotube scaffold but has “steered away” from using carbon nanotubes because of “unanswered questions” over their safety.

“Some (studies) say they’re fine and that they can be passed out of the body when the scaffold degrades,” he said.

“Others have said that they’re quite toxic to cells or can accumulate in the lungs,” he added.

The study has been published in the journal Soft Matter. (ANI)

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