http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/tissue engineering http://io9.com/tag/tissue engineering

There's no two ways about it: humans love meat. By 2030, it's estimated that the world's annual meat production will reach 376 million tons, up from 218 million tons in 1999. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5859541&view=rss&microfeed=true

There is no denying that growing an anal sphincter in a petri dish is hilarious. There is also no denying that nobody reading this would enjoy being without an anal sphincter, so it's good that there are back-ups being developed. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5829725&view=rss&microfeed=true

A new technique has been developed that uses spider silk to make human skin, suitable for skin grafts. And the world trembles. Find out why spider webs offer the best possible material to use for a skin replacement. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5829715&view=rss&microfeed=true

Mice are the first step in trying out new drugs that may one day help humans. The problem is that these rodents metabolize drugs in often a very different way than we do, meaning that much of the research in mice can't be applied to humans. Researchers from Stanford University may have found a way around this by creating mice with human livers. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5820566&view=rss&microfeed=true

Scientists have refined tissue repair techniques using stem cells to the point where they believe we might have pills that repair heart muscles in 10 years. Reports the BBC: More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5810947&view=rss&microfeed=true

The cool trick about stem cells is that they're super adaptable, and can become any other sort of cell, right? So why not use a mass of stem cells to regenerate a limb? Or grow an extra one? Well, it looks like it's all a bit more complicated than that. According to new research on the self-regenerating Zebrafish, the fish don't just form a mass of stem cells on a fin's stump to regrow the limb. Zebrafish actually use a slurry of cells, of different origins and with different purposes. Think salad, not soup. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5802654&view=rss&microfeed=true

For the first time, scientists have coaxed a damaged heart to regrow healthy tissues on its own. They applied living "patches" to a heart, in what is a major breakthrough for people recovering from heart attacks. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5799547&view=rss&microfeed=true

A new cocktail that allows sodium ions to pour into cells makes tadpoles grow new tails. A similar one could be used to regenerate human spinal cords and lost limbs. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5651118&view=rss&microfeed=true

Hold off on the megadoses of antioxidant vitamins like C and E. A study by researchers at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute shows that you can overdose on these health aids, and the result could be mutated stem cells that cause cancer. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5531098&view=rss&microfeed=true

A woman, blind for 9 years, can see again after doctors performed a rare surgery where her own tooth was inserted into eye. How does this procedure work? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5362073&view=rss&microfeed=true

Thanks to advances in biotechnology, German researchers can now rapidly mass produce swatches of real human skin. At 34 Euros per unit, this manufactured skin is so cheap you might soon find it for sale next to bandages in the pharmacy. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5263222&view=rss&microfeed=true

This adorable little ant can be trusted to carry quite a lot on its back in the interest of the common good. In that way, it's surprisingly similar to the cells of your immune system, as researchers from MIT and Harvard revealed earlier this month. They've found a way to hook synthetic patches to the surface of B and T cells — and to control the movements of those cells with magnetic fields. Armed with these so-called "backpacks," lymphocytes can now identify growing tumors and infections, as well as personally (or cellularly?) deliver treatments to ailing cells. This could be the first crest of a wave of revolutionary new school supplies in the world of tissue engineering. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5089422&view=rss&microfeed=true

When raising a building, construction workers first create a scaffold, a rough framework that mimics the structure of the completed project. As it turns out, biological engineers do the same thing when they develop technology that will enable people to repair their own damaged hearts. This week in Nature Materials, Lisa E. Freed and George C. Engelmayr, Jr. of Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology describe the "accordion-like honeycombs" they've designed that can fight the effects of heart attacks or congenital heart defects — and they present an eerie video of the pulsing, beating tissues in action. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5074356&view=rss&microfeed=true

In fifty years, standard-issue supersoldiers will boast exoskeletons that make bullet-proof vests obsolete. In fact, at the rate researchers are figuring out bone synthesis, you could have an exoskeleton even sooner than that. Using substances called "hydrogels" (pictured), tissue engineers create a thick, flexible scaffold where cells can thrive and grow. Now Carnegie-Mellon scientists have made a breakthrough, using hydrogels to generate bones as well as soft tissues. That means people could regrow bones and create new bony structures where they didn't exist before. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5038144&view=rss&microfeed=true

It's the next step on the path to robust tissue engineering and synthetic meat. Researchers today announced that they'd used special progenitor cells to grow human blood vessels inside mice. The vessels grew after scientists injected the cells into the mice, forming a "ball" of self-assembled veins that connected to each other and pumped blood. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5026873&view=rss&microfeed=true

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are putting their money where their mouths are with a million dollar contest to see who can grow edible, tasty chicken nugget meat in a lab by 2012. The prospect of lab-grown meat has a lot of promise, but has been around for years without much progress, probably because of a lack of funding. With the prize money on the table, PETA hopes to do for in vitro meat what the Ansari X-Prize did for commercial spaceflight. It's a terrific idea, but one wonders if they've thought this through well — part of the process involves 10 PETA judges tasting experimental, lab-grown chicken nuggets that may not be ready for prime time yet. Image: Flickr More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=383111&view=rss&microfeed=true

In five years, you'll be eating a hamburger that no animal died for. Instead, that burger will have been grown from a tiny sample of cells in a plant-and-mushroom bath. The cow who donated the cells will be frolicking in a meadow somewhere, having long forgotten the annoying poke from a tissue engineer with a syringe. At a meeting in Norway of the In Vitro Meat Consortium late last week, scientists and entrepreneurs gathered to discuss the future of "cultured meat," or meat that's essentially grown like cultures in a lab (pictured here). This meeting, the first of its kind, signaled the beginning of a viable industry around the production of vat-grown meat. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=379280&view=rss&microfeed=true

Welcome to Ask a Biogeek, a column about cutting-edge biology by UC Berkeley researcher Terry Johnson. Knowing which organs you can live without is all well and good, but wouldn't you rather have replacement organs? Tissue engineers already have some pretty good ones if you happen to lose your skin or severely damage your bones. And there are some other organs we're cooking up for you too, as long as you can hold out for a few more years. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=375688&view=rss&microfeed=true