NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Walking Bio-Bot Made WIth Cells, Gels

Humans build autonomous robots all the time, but they tend to be made of metal, plastic and need batteries. Now a team at the University of Illinois has built an antonomous robot made from plastic and living cells. Such a device could be used to detect chemicals in water, climb walls or react to certain elements in the water like a sensor.

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Engineering professor Rashid Bashir led a group of scientists that put a layer of heart cells from a rat on one side of a layer of hydrogel. The heart cells, being muscle cells, contract, and bend the whole thing. When they relax, it straightens out. The rhythmic expansion and contractraction allows the so-called bio bot to pull itself along.

Because the bio-bot is made of soft plastic and cells, it can be manipulated into shapes that aren't possible with metal. For example, Bashir's group made the polymer into a shape with two appendages -- one shaped like a wide square and for support and another shaped into a thin, flat shape that bends. When it "walks" it looks more like a swimming motion.

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Another feature is the way it's made: the hydrogel part was made in a 3D printer. By printing robot "parts" this way, it's possible to get a greater variety of shapes. It also means that designing new ones is a much quicker process, since the shaping is done on design software and the materials are simple to work with. The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Credit: University of Illinois

 

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Pelt Yourself With Laboratory Leather

Former porn star Jenna Jameson's "Pleather Yourself" photo shoot was a provocative, anti-leather component of PETA's NSFW initiative last summer. However, the animal rights group might not have to resort to such gimmicky tactics in the future, now that laboratory leather is on the horizon.

Modern Meadow is a company that is developing new approaches to meat and leather production. In August, Breakout Labs, a branch of PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel's foundation, awarded the company a grant to bioprint meat and leather.

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"Our emphasis first is not on meat, it's on leather," cofounder and CEO Andras Forgacs told Txchnologist. "The main reason is that, technically, skin is a simpler structure than meat, making it easier to produce."

Though still in the development stage, Modern Meadow envisions doing so by first extracting, isolating and even genetically modifying cells from live animals. Next, cells would be proliferated in a bioreactor and lumped together to create aggregated spheres of cells. The aggregates would then be put together in layers, allowing them to fuse together, potentially by way of 3-D printing.

Then the bioassembled cells would be put into a bioreactor and given time to mature.

"We create the embryonic precursor and, in the bioreactor, apply physical cues to let nature take over," Forgacs said. "This stimulates collagen production in the case of the cells that will become leather and muscle growth in what will become meat."

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Finally, after several weeks of cells being deprived of food, skin tissue turns to hide while the muscle and fat tissue are harvested for food. Being that the hides are hairless and don't have a tough outer skin, the tanning process is condensed, thus decreasing the amount of toxic chemicals needed for the operation.

"Nothing we're doing requires a scientific leap of faith," Forgacs said. "There's no science we're using that we're not confident with. This isn't about scientific risks, it's about engineering challenges."

via Txchnologist

Credit: Arctic-Images/Corbis

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Cyborg Update: Living Tissue Grown on Nanowires

One of the staples of science fiction is embedding the human body with sensors, to merge humans and machines. That goal may be a bit closer.

A team of chemists and anesthesiologists has found a way to embed nanometer-scale wires into living tissue. When implanted into a body, the "cyborg" tissue could potentially sense and monitor medicine or inflammation and keep doctors aware of whether the transplant is working.

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The scientists started with a mesh of silicon wires coated in an organic polymer, each 30 to 80 nanometers in diameter. The mesh is three-dimensional, like a sponge, and can be bent into any shape. Next, the scientists seeded the mesh with living cells that were grown in a culture. The result was living cells with a three-dimensional mechanical support able to carry electrical signals. While two-dimensional scaffolds have been made before, those don't replicate what happens in the human body, where cells are in three-dimensional structures.

Thus far the team has engineered cyborg tissues using heart, muscle, blood vessel and nerve cells. The cells' viability and activity wasn't affected. The embedded sensory circuits were able to pick up electrical signals generated by the cells in response to drugs. In the case of the blood vessels, the circuits detected pH changes, which could be useful in tracking inflammation.

None of these pieces of tissue has been implanted into a human being yet; it will be some time before the technology gets to that point.

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The team was led by Charles M. Lieber, a professor of chemistry at Harvard and Daniel Kohane, a Harvard Medical School anesthesiologist. Kohane developed the "scaffolds" for the cells. Other contributors were Robert Langer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Zhigang Suo, professor of mechanics and materials at Harvard. The work was published Aug. 26 in Nature Materials.

Credit: Charles M. Lieber and Daniel S. Kohane, MIT

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Artificial Jellyfish Made From Rat Cells

Aside from Frankenstein, previous attempts to make synthetic life have focused on genes. Geneticist Craig Venter and his colleagues, for example, announced in 2010 that they had created a one-celled creature by inserting an artificial genome in an existing cell that reproduced.

Now a separate team of scientists from Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology have built an eight-armed jellyfish by inserting muscle cells from a rat into a sheet of silicone. The resulting "medusoid," as they called it, could offer insights into tissue engineering -- such as re-building a heart. And show that when building tissues, there might be several ways or materials to use other than those found in nature.

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To build the medusoid, the scientists mapped out the protein networks in a real jellyfish's muscle cells. They then looked at how electrical current triggers the muscle contraction.

Another piece of the puzzle was uncovering the mechanics at how jellyfish move. The animals squeezes a muscle to propel itself through the water, but it was important to study the biomechanics of the stroke in order to duplicate it.

The scientists also found that a sheet of cultured heart muscle tissue from a rat would contract when electrically stimulated in a liquid environment. By incorporating the muscle cells with a silicone polymer membrane, they were able to create a jellyfish-shaped body with eight appendages. The artificial creature was put into a container of salt water and hit with an electrical current. It started swimming just like a real animal.

The next step is making a jellyfish that engages in ordinary behaviors, such as seeking food and responding to its environment.

BLOG: Artificial Skin Made From Spider Silk

Study co-author Kevin Kit Parker, professor of bioengineering and applied physics at Harvard, said he got interested in the project in 2007, when he started thinking about muscular pumps such as hearts. Seeing jellyfish at the New England Aquarium inspired him: he saw that there were similarities between jellyfish and human hearts.

Parker worked with Collaborating with Janna Nawroth, a doctoral student in biology at Caltech and lead author. They also worked with Nawroth’s adviser, John Dabiri, a professor of aeronautics and bioengineering at Caltech, and an expert in biological propulsion. The study was published in the journal Nature Biotechnology on July 22.

Credit: Harvard University, Caltech

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Spray-on Skin Kit Could Heal Wounds Faster

The idea of spray-on skin conjures up memories of Halloween costumes past. But in the case of ReCell, it’s actually a kit that can do a lot of good. The ReCell Kit has been developed by Avita Medical to treat burns, wounds, and hyper or hypo pigmentation caused by disease, and to improve the look of scars. It works by harvesting a patient’s keratinocytes and melanocytes, the building blocks of skin cells, and putting them in a suspension solution that allows them to multiply. Because the cells are from the same patient, there is no risk of rejection or disease.

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An area about 80 times as large as the original sample can be produced in under a half hour. After that, the new cells are sprayed over the burn, where they will multiply even more. The company claims this type of application will result in less scarring (as compared with skin grafts) and make the skin look as if it were never damaged, especially in younger patients. The kit has been approved for use in Europe, Australia and Canada, but is still undergoing clinical trials in the United States.

Via: Gizmodo

Credit: Avita Medical

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Bulletproof Skin Made From Spider Silk

Just last week we learned about spiders coming to the aid of burn victims. Now it looks like our friendly neighborhood arachnids are being used to create the ultimate superhero power: bulletproof human skin.

Well, almost.

BLOG: Artificial Skin Made From Spider Silk

In her new project, 2.6g 329m/s, Dutch artist Jalila Essaidi, along with Forensic Genomics Consortium Netherlands, created a swatch of nearly bulletproof skin made from spider silk and human skin cells. The project takes its name from the maximum weight and velocity a Type 1 bulletproof vest can withstand from a .22 calibre Long Rifle bullet.

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By grafting spider silk between the epidermis and dermis, the skin was able to stop a bullet that was fired at a reduced speed. However, it failed to repel a bullet that was fired at normal speed from a .22 calibre rifle.

But that's fine with Essaidi. She's more interested in the conversation that her project will generate.

"With this work I want to show that safety in its broadest sense is a relative concept, and hence the term bulletproof," Essaidi said in a press release. "The work did stop some partially slowed bullets but not the one at full speed."

"But even with the skin pierced by the bullet the experiment is still a success. It leads to the conversation about how which form of safety would benefit society."

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The project is part of an exhibition called Designers & Artists 4 Genomics at the Naturalis biodiversity museum in Leiden, Netherlands. The exhibit runs until Jan. 8, 2012.

[Via TechNewsDaily]

photo: A bullet is repelled by a matrix of spider silk and human skin cells. Forensic Genomics Consortium of the Netherlands

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Artificial Skin Made From Spider Silk

Spider-Man has had a rough summer. Recent news of his impending death and an overwrought, injury-prone musical have left the web-slinging community with a few black eyes. Yet like any great origin story, resurrection often rises out of the ashes. Case in point: recent news of spiders coming to the rescue of burn victims.

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Hanna Wendt, a tissue engineer in the Department of Plastic, Hand and Reconstructive Surgery at Medical School Hannover in Germany, along with her colleagues, recently published a study that suggests spider silk may hold the key to creating artificial skin for burn victims and other patients requiring skin grafts.

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Wendt says previous materials, like collagen, used to create artificial skin did not seem strong enough, so she and her team turned to a material 5 times stronger than Kevlar: spider dragline silk.

"Spider silks display excellent mechanical features that even rival man-made, high-tech fibers," the study explains.

The researchers essentially milked the silk glands of golden orb web spiders, spooling the silk fibers as they came out. Next, the dragline silk was woven onto a rectangular steel frame, 0.7 mm thick, resulting in an easy-to-handle meshwork frame that could be sterilized.

Wendt and her colleagues found that human skins cell types could flourish on these meshwork frames if they were properly nurtured with nutrients, warmth and air.

"After two weeks of cultivating single single fibroblasts, keratinocytes were added to generate a bilayered skin model, consisting of dermis and epidermis equivalents," the study states.

BLOG: Spray-On Skin Offers Fast Healing For Burns

Depspite being impressed by how human cells responded to spider silk, Wendt thinks the use of synthetic fibers must be considered, especially since harvesting large amounts of spider silk is not practical.

"I think in the long term, for widespread daily clinical use, synthetic silk fibers providing the same mechanical -- and cell culture -- properties will be needed," Wendt told LiveScience.

[Via TechNewsDaily]

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Spinal Disc Implants Help Fight Back Pain

In what is surely to elicit sighs of relief from the millions of people who suffer from lower back and neck pain, a more permanent solution in spinal disc implants has arrived.

Engineers at Cornell University and doctors at the Weill Cornell Medical College have developed oxymoronic 'living' artificial discs that outperform current implants used in discectomies, a surgery where damaged spinal discs are removed.

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Current disc implants are made from a combination of metal and plastic, and often deteriorate over time. The new artificial discs are made out of two polymers -- collagen, which wraps around the outside of the disc like a tire and a hydrogel called alginate in the middle that helps bear weight, just like real discs.

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The clincher, however, is that the Cornell researchers planted cells in the new implants that germinate new tissue. Due to the growth of cells, the team found the new implants got better as they matured in the body.

"Our implants have maintained 70 to 80 percent of initial disc height. In fact, the mechanical properties get better with time," says Lawrence Bonassar, Ph.D., in a Cornell news release. Bonassar is associate professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering at Cornell.

Roger Hartl, M.D., associate professor of neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medical College and chief of spinal surgery at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center says the news discs are superior to traditional discs due to their ability to integrate with the vertebrae.

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"Bone or metal or plastic implants are complicated structures which come with a mechanical risk of the structures moving around, or debris from the metal or plastic particles accumulating in the body from wear and tear," he says.

Furthermore, Hartl says discectomies would become less invasive, safer and see a reduction in long-term side effects.

[Via GizMag]

Photo: Stephen Simpson/Getty Images

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Spray-On Skin Cells For Burn Victims

First there was the spray-on tan, and now comes the spray-on skin cells. A new device can spray a burn victim's own skin cells onto damaged skin and dramatically reduce how much time it takes for burn patient to recover.

The Skin-Cell Gun, as it's called, earned that nickname because it basically works like a more complicated spray-paint gun. A doctor takes a biopsy from the patient's undamaged skin to isolate the healthy stem cells. A water-based solution containing those healthy stem cells is then sprayed on the burn, and the patient is on the fast track to recovery. It was through study of stem cells that allowed other researchers to develop a new approach that transforms skin cells into beating heart cells.

The process was first developed in 2008 by Professor Joerg C. Gerlach and colleagues at the Department of Surgery at the University of Pittsburg’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

Skin Cells Switch to Beating Heart Cells

The Skin-Cell gun process only takes an hour and a half from start to finish, compared to the old method using skin grafts that can take weeks or even months. According to PhysOrg, that process involves taking skin sections from uninjured parts of the patient’s body, or growing sheets of skin artificially, and grafting them over the burn.

The difference in recovery time is equally drastic between the two methods. While it can take several weeks for a patient to recover using traditional treatment, the Skin-Cell Gun process takes just a few days for a full recovery.

The National Geographic Channel recently produced a short video segment that looks at the Skin-Cell Gun. It's worth a view, but there are some mildly disturbing images of several skin damage:

Photo courtesy Jorg Gerlach, University of Pittsburgh

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Test Tube Meat Grown in the Lab

It was strange enough when cloned cow meat entered the food chain, but now one scientist is trying to grow test tube meat in his laboratory. Vladimir Mironov, a biologist and tissue engineer at the Medical University of South Carolina, has been working to grow "cultured" meat for a decade, and is closer than ever to achieving his goal.

Mironov may be my favorite mad scientist since the chemist who had the periodic table engraved on one of his hairs.

Mironov is one of just a handful of scientists around the world who are involved in bioengineering cultured meat. So why would researchers like Mironov want to grow their own meat?

According to Reuters, Mironov believes test tube meat could help solve future global food crises resulting from shrinking amounts of land available for grazing cows and chickens.

Also, researchers have been looking for a way to grow cows that don't fart as much. The methane that is in cow farts is a greenhouse twenty times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Instead of developing a cow that doesn't fart quite as much, Mironov wants to cut out the cow altogether.

The grown meat might also be more efficient to grow than is possible with animals. "Animals require between 3 and 8 pounds of nutrient to make 1 pound of meat. It's fairly inefficient. Animals consume food and produce waste. Cultured meat doesn't have a digestive system," he told Reuters.

He envisions enormous buildings filled with large bioreactors to manufacture "charlem," his shorthand for "Charleston engineered meat," named after the town in South Carolina where he does much of his work.

"It will be functional, natural, designed food," Mironov told Reuters. "How do you want it to taste? You want a little bit of fat, you want pork, you want lamb? We design exactly what you want. We can design texture."

So, would you ever buy test tube meat that was grown in a lab? Or is that just too weird and potentially unsafe for you? Let us know in the comments section.

Photo: Felix Wirth/Corbis

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