Towards a Mass Production System for Liver Organoids

Researchers can create functional organ tissue in small quantities, building few-millimeter-sized structures known as organoids. Yet because there is still no reliable approach to the creation of the capillary networks required to support thick tissue sections, this cannot yet scale up to the production of full-size replacement organs. That may not be a roadblock for organs such as the liver and kidney, which are responsible for what are essentially chemical manufacture and filtration tasks; in this case the large-scale structure of the organ isn't as important as the small-scale structure, and much of the organ might be thought of as countless tiny factories operating independently in response to circumstances. The arrangement of those factories can vary. Thus it should be possible to rescue a failing liver or kidney by transplanting scores or hundreds of functional organoids grown from the patient's own cells. The organoids will integrate with the existing tissue, and blood vessel networks will growth into and through them - that much has been demonstrated in animal studies for single organoids in a number of different organs. The only challenge standing in the way of this vision for the near future is the cost and time required to create organoids, a process that has yet to be scaled up for mass manufacture. Researchers report creating a biologically accurate mass-production platform that overcomes major barriers to bioengineering human liver tissues suitab...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs