Those who are interested know well the achievement of Dr. Atala presented in a TED lecture about printing of a kidney from stem cells. I am working in the area of physics so I was unable to understand from his presentation why the kidney is not transplanted, neither heard about it up till now. Can anyone explain the reason why?. Does it lack a vascular system as I think?
As far as I know one problem is that a real kidney
requires a variety of tissues, not only a single cell
type to function. Blood vessels can now be printed
with special gels that vanish under certain
conditions and leave tubes.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/525161/artificial-organs-may-finally-get-a-blood-supply/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201305506/abstract
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-07/uop-pri062912.php
http://www.medgadget.com/2014/03/3d-printed-tissue-integrated-with-human-blood-vessel-cells.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21854-3d-blood-vessels-could-aid-artificial-organs.html
http://www.washington.edu/news/2012/05/28/engineered-microvessels-provide-a-3-d-test-bed-for-human-diseases/
http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1259
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23382-kidney-breakthrough-complete-labgrown-organ-works-in-rats.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22398-pioneering-labgrown-kidney-does-its-job-in-animals.html
Regards,
Joachim
Thank you Joachim
a very helpful and exhaustive overnview.
I would certainly review them.
When blood vessels can be integrated I cant
understand what is the reason then. You point
out that diffrent tissue cells are needed but
then printing can be done with diffrent cells?
Regards
Ilian
Unfortunately no links available. I've heard that as
an aside in a podcast about a different success.
Tissue engineers have created an organ that did
not need blood vessels (was it a trachea?) by
decellularizing a donor organ and seeding it
with the patient's stem cells.
On a flat surface it is possible to direct cell
differentiation to a certain extent by designing
the mechanical environment, the landscape.
Cells sense their context, their neighborhood.
As far as I remember a couple of days ago
an article appeared suggesting that similar can
be achieved with electric fields or currents.
Regards,
Joachim
I realised these achievments are very recent 2-3
months. So there is work going trought. Very
small capillar is seen as dificult to build. I
wonder why - today is possible to build carbon
nanotubes. If one grow cells around them
he would probably get capillars. But it needs
collaboration between physicists and biologists.
Just another idea inspired by your comment:
They can implant recepient cells in the donor
organ and supress the rejection in the lab until
they replace all donor cells. Of course the
donor may be a pig.
EM fields shaped as ring can move charged
particles and why not charged before cells.
The kidney is an extremely complex organ. We are probably a couple decades away from printing an entire kidney, at least an implantable kidney. We still havent completely identified the cell types required for such a project, let alone how to print those cells without killing them.
Dear Colleagues, every one contributing very valuable information..its very nice. I too seen the TED video. Using 3D printing these days we can prepare most tissue/organ types. In this case the tissues made are physically perfect but the functionality of these cells/tissues as a single unit is not controllable yet. Angiogenesis and fluid flow (including blood and body fluids) yet to be studied vastly . We too have the difficulty to develop blood capillaries at 200 microns vicinity to each cell (it is already proved that nutrients/metabolites diffusion from cell vicinity to blood capillaries is not possible if they are apart by more than 200-300 microns. In human body we can find blood capillaries at 200 microns vicinity). so sill lot of questions remained to be answered before successful installation of artificial, functional 3D tissues/organs in humans.
There are still a variety of problems to be addressed in making an entire organ from various cells and transplanting them. I've been looking into this field with regards to artificial livers, and many of the hurdles you have discussed here apply to livers as well. An additional concern is the cell signalling between these various tissue types.
For instance, hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) begin to lose their normal gene expression when not co-cultured with other cells, like Kupffer cells. It is theorized that the cell-cell signalling between the various types of cells within an organ help to keep the cells operating "on all cylinders," as it were.
Additionally, the ability to supply the architecture of the organ in questions is highly important. While it has been shown that one can manufacture 2D hepatic sheets or 3D spheroids of liver tissue, they still do not possess the full functionality of the organ itself, owing to the lack of normal organ architecture and vasculature.
A very interesting thread you all have here.
Thank you.
I intend starting investigation about the possibility to built a tube of cells grown in culture around a thin copper wire.
I would be very careful with statements like "Using 3D printing these days we can prepare most tissue/organ types." That is simply not true. Creating a dumb collagen gelatin model is far far far from printing an organ. The ECM of many organs, kidney in particular, are uniquely combined and controlled. As far as I know, only a handful of proteins can be successfully printed. And lets not get into the complexity of cells and cell phenotypes.
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