The Future We Deserve: Organs Grown From Plants - Alternative View

The Future We Deserve: Organs Grown From Plants - Alternative View
The Future We Deserve: Organs Grown From Plants - Alternative View

Video: The Future We Deserve: Organs Grown From Plants - Alternative View

Video: The Future We Deserve: Organs Grown From Plants - Alternative View
Video: Strange Materials with Mark Miodownik 2024, March
Anonim

In a laboratory with a high ceiling, there is an ear on a dish in a metal box. It is actually a piece of apple, carved in the shape of an ear, but not quite an apple either; cellulose was washed from the apple cells, and human cells were populated instead. These are HeLa cells, notorious for long ago cultivating offspring in the form of cervical cancer. Yes, this is the ear from the womb, held by the apple.

“Biohacking is the new horticulture,” says Andrew Pelling, director of the Pelling Biophysical Manipulation Laboratory at the University of Ottawa. Pelling eschews the current fashion for genetic and biochemical manipulation, examining the behavior of cells when their physical environment changes.

The apple ear was created as a work of fiction, referring to the famous case where the human ear was grown on the back of a mouse, and the choice of HeLa cells was deliberately provocative. But the fusion of plant and animal that this piece represents promises a lot for regenerative medicine, where defective body parts can be replaced with engineering alternatives.

Biomaterials engineers who create an alternative to our own body tissues have almost always worked on animals - pigs, for example - whose organs are similar to ours. The plant kingdom was largely neglected. However, it offers a huge variety of architectures, many of which can serve the needs of human physiology. It also offers a way to move away from expensive proprietary biomaterials: open source for everyone.

The main problem in creating an organ is to develop materials that will be able to preserve new cells in the body, maintain the shape and organization of the organ. In a synthetic approach, a molded polymer scaffold can be shaped like an organ and then biodegrade as new cells gradually replace it. Or the cells of the donor organ can be washed out until there is no “organ ghost” - collagen structures, which will then be populated by the patient's own cells. In any case, artificial and organic biomaterials are produced commercially and are very expensive.

In the field of biomaterials, billions of dollars change from hand to hand every year: bones, cartilage, skin and entire organs change. This industry attracts talented researchers who are willing to profit from their intellectual property, but the majority of the world cannot afford it. For example, few people can spend $ 800 on a cubic centimeter of decellularized skin allograft to repair a badly torn rotator cuff, but apples can do the same for a cent for the same volume.

Buy a red apple from the grocery store (or pick from the garden), slice and wash with soap, and then sterilize in boiling water for a fiber mesh ready to work with human cells. Implanted under the skin, these scaffolds quickly fill up with cells from the surrounding tissue, followed by blood vessels. After eight weeks, they are fully compatible with the body; the immune system doesn't even try to reject them. Part of the plant begins to live like a living being.

While some of Pelling's work requires genetic manipulation, his enthusiasm is more in physical manipulation of cells - nudging them with tiny needles, stretching them with a laser, or enclosing them in containers of different shapes to see how they organize themselves. The latter approach has valuable applications for complex medical problems such as paraplegia.

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The tiny capillaries in asparagus stems are the right size and shape for spinal cord repair. Pelling and his neuroscientists have demonstrated that mouse nerve cells grow well in these channels, and while spinal cord implants tend to break down in the body, plant fiber does not. “She's completely inert - like titanium,” says Pelling. Likewise, rose petals perfectly form scaffolding for skin grafts.

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“This kind of research is important as it expands the toolbox,” says Jeffrey Karp, a biomaterials expert at Harvard School of Medicine. "Discoveries like these open up new opportunities for those working in translational medicine."

Pelling's Lab is located in Canada, where it benefits from a loyal regulatory environment. Unlike Europe, which has strong opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs), or the United States, with its history of controversy, Canada encourages biohacking and health research in general. In 2011, Canada's National Department of Health even sponsored a symposium called Our Post-Human Future, where you can guess what was being discussed (our post-human future, obviously).

To find a medical use, open source biomaterials - like the decellularized apple recipe above - have to go through several stages of testing for regulatory approval. If no profit is seen at the end of this process, the clinical trial will need private funding. Globally, affordable, locally produced and inexpensive biomaterials may well be a target for philanthropists.

While some biological research requires certified laboratories and multiple levels of safety, many are abandoning this. Pelling's Lab is developing methods that allow the general public to tweet possible experiments for the laboratory, or directly operate the microscope, or try to replicate the experiment at home using home biohacking equipment and widely available materials.

“Imagine that humans would create cellular structures in the same way that they donate computing power to SETI - the search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” says Pelling. "Everyone will be puzzled over this puzzle, and we could test hundreds of conditions."

Places like Pelling's lab promise to take cell manipulation to the streets, whether we like it or not. Perhaps this is the future we deserve the most: plant-grown organs.

I am Groot.

ILYA KHEL