3. Tissue Engineering
In layman’s terms, Nina
Tandon is talking about the
ability of pluripotent stem
cells to replace the
controversial embryotic
stem cells in the creation of
recreating cells and by
doing that recreating body
parts.
4. Many people believe that
this should be illegal and
humans should live and die
and modifying cells to
replace other cells is
unnatural.
Unfortunately, those same
people believe that drug
testing on rats is okay since
we’re similar internally. In
the video, Nina gave us a
statistic of it takes roughly
$1,000,000,000 and ten years
to clear a drug for human
market and that doesn’t even
give us a 100% guarantee
that will work because
humans are not rats.
(Not a human)
―So what if we had better models in the lab
that could not only mimic us better than rats
but also reflect our diversity? Let's see how
we can do it with tissue engineering.‖ –
Nina Tandon
5. Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells are
extremely similar to Embryonic
Stem Cells, developed/found in
Japan recently, these cells can be
tricked into a embryonic state by
something similar to cellular
amnesia. By tricking these cells,
We can make a model of anything:
Heart, Brain, Skin, etc. all on a chip.
In Nina Tandon’s lab, the scientests
and her are in the middle of
creating a certain bioreactor to help
in the creation of a more
modular, scalable and tangible way.
More about Pluripotent
Stem Cells:
6. Disease Recreation
The pluripotent stem cells also
have the ability to recreate
diseases. Wouldn’t that be
amazing? The can grow and
culture these diseases from
stage 1 to see and understand
how and why they mature they
way they do.
That’s one more step in curing
the so-called ―incurable genetic
diseases‖ like retinitis
pigmentosa.
The vision of somebody with Retinitis
Pigmentosa. It’s like having a
permanent vignette effect on your
vision.
7. Stem Cells
―Red bone marrow contains pluripotent stem cells, the parent cells that divide
and give rise to all of the various types of blood cells (Fig. 6.1)… Scientists are
discovering that under the right conditions in the laboratory, stem cells can be
―coaxed‖ into becoming a greater variety of cell types—cells that might have
the potential to treat human diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer
disease, among many others.‖(Human Biology pg. 114)
Fig.
6.1
8. Unfortunately, Some people are
not 100% sold on the idea of
genetically engineered body
parts. They ask if it really as good
as an entire organ system like
with a rat. (Ex. Drugs can be
metabolized in various parts of
the body.) Though, we aren’t
there in the science world to
recreate an entire body
system, Nina goes on to say how
by combining tissue engineering
techniques with microfluidics, the
field is moving towards just that.
Tissue engineering to engineer
body parts for replacement isn’t
the only thing these stem cells
can accomplish. Once the model
is created, we can use those
models to create a more
personalized treatment plan for
patients. That means, if we ever
get to that point, that we can test
drugs on replications of our body
instead of taking various
dangerous drugs and
going, ―Will this even work?‖
Personalized Medicine
9. In Retrospect
Tissue engineering is great for the
drug screening process– in every
step of it.
• Revolutionize lab testing
• Reduce animal testing
• Human testing– clinical trials
• Individualized treatments
Which all of those we don’t even
consider an option at this point in
drug screening process.
It also can open up an entire market
for replacement body parts. If
somebody has a heart that is on it’s
last legs, they can create one for you
without all the diseases riddling it.
It would be a lot safer than the
market(in reference to the organ
black market) now a days and
would quicken the process for
transplants because you wouldn’t
have to wait for a donor to show
up– just for your new heart to be
cultured and harvested.
