Organoids News and Research

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Organoids are three-dimensional cell cultures from embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells that model important features of whole organs.

Closer to engineering new kidney tissue

With a worldwide shortage of kidneys for patients who need kidney transplants, researchers are diligently working to find ways to engineer new kidney tissue from a patient's own cells or another source. They've come a step closer to realizing that goal with a breakthrough described in an upcoming Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN) study.

20 Oct 2012

Biomimetic bioartificial livers and cell toxicity assays: an interview with Dr. Joris Braspenning, CEO Medicyte

Biomimetic bioartificial livers are liver organoids based on synthetic equivalents of the human extracellular matrix (ECM) which will be seeded with human cells.

1 Aug 2012

NIH grants aim at creating 3-D tissue chips to help identify drug safety signals

Seventeen National Institutes of Health grants are aimed at creating 3-D chips with living cells and tissues that accurately model the structure and function of human organs such as the lung, liver and heart. Once developed, these tissue chips will be tested with compounds known to be safe or toxic in humans to help identify the most reliable drug safety signals - ultimately advancing research to help predict the safety of potential drugs in a faster, more cost-effective way.

25 Jul 2012

3D printed templates of filament networks can improve function of engineered living tissues

Researchers are hopeful that new advances in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine could one day make a replacement liver from a patient's own cells, or animal muscle tissue that could be cut into steaks without ever being inside a cow.

2 Jul 2012

Wake Forest Baptist researchers achieve early milestone in lab-engineered kidney project

Regenerative medicine researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have reached an early milestone in a long-term project that aims to build replacement kidneys in the lab to help solve the shortage of donor organs.

23 Jun 2012

Scientists identify pathway that activates hepsin on the surface of breast tumor cells

Scientists from the University of Helsinki and from UCSF have exposed a cell pathway that breast tumor cells use to destruct local tissue neighborhood. Cancer cells may use this pathway to free themselves from mammary epithelial tissue architecture, to spread to surrounding tissues. The cell pathway, the researchers found, is a biochemical chain of events leading to activation of a protein-cleaving enzyme on the surface of the tumor cells.

18 Jan 2012

Scientists identify hepsin protein's role in breast cancer

Cancers rarely are deadly unless they evolve the ability to grow beyond the tissues in which they first arise. Normally, cells -- even early-stage tumor cells -- are tethered to scaffolding that helps to restrain any destructive tendencies. But scientists from the University of Helsinki, Finland, and from UCSF have identified a cleaver-wielding protein that frees some tumor cells, allowing them to further misbehave.

18 Jan 2012

Low frequency ultrasound can heal and regenerate body tissues

When we think of ultrasound, it's usually imaging the inside of the body that springs to mind. However, while ultrasound imaging typically requires frequencies that are 50 to 2500 times higher than those human ear can detect, recent increasing evidence indicates that ultrasound at lower frequency can also be used to help certain body tissues to heal and regenerate. Now research that appears in Open Access Journal of Tissue Engineering published by SAGE-Hindawi suggests that ultrasound could also help tissue grafts to survive and thrive following surgery.

28 May 2010