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Growing Artificial Tissue in Space and on Earth
By Kenneth Silber
Staff Writer
posted: 07:38 am ET
07 October 1999
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heart_tissueA technique developed to grow cells in space has proven useful in the engineering of heart tissue on Earth -- a possible step toward the development of replacement parts for damaged human hearts. Lisa E. Freed, a principal research scientist in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, has been working since 1992 on tissue engineering research funded partly by NASA's Johnson Space Center. In 1996, Freed and collaborators flew an automated experiment to develop cartilage tissue in a NASA bioreactor aboard the Russian space station Mir. Meanwhile, a similar experiment was conducted in a bioreactor at the Johnson Space Center, to determine whether the cells would grow any differently on Earth. The result, says Freed, is that the space-based tissue was weaker than its terrestrial counterpart. This, she notes, was consistent with studies showing astronauts' bones and other tissues grow weaker in low gravity. However, says Freed, "the NASA bioreactor on the ground was superior to other systems" used for growing cells, such as petri dishes and spinner flasks. The device rotates to keep cells in constant free-fall, and provides a plastic lattice to direct their growth -- essentially "tricking cells into generating whole tissues," says Freed. Using the same technique, Freed and colleagues have engineered heart tissue that may be useful in fixing heart defects or -- eventually -- constructing an artificial heart. In the August issue of the American Journal of Physiology, the researchers describe the structural and electrical properties of the engineered heart tissue, and in the September issue of the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering they describe its cell density and other characteristics.
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