How cool is this? - Thing 7

Photo from Next Nature



As one blogger wrote: It's cute and kinda gross at the same time.

Researchers in Tokyo this week announced they used cells to create a figure about 1/5 th of an inch tall.

They took a doll-shaped mold and cultivated 100,000 cell capsules — 0.1-millimeter balls of collagen, each coated with dozens of skin cells — and put them in the mold for a day. When the cell capsules formed a mass of tissue, it was placed in a culture solution where it lived for another day.

It was created "to demonstrate a new method for fabricating three-dimensional living biological structures ..."

The researchers also tried the method with human liver cells. Lead researcher Shoji Takeuchi said the method can be used to create bodily organs and tissues with complex cellular structures which could prove useful in regenerative medicine and drug development.

“The overall shape can be controlled by changing the mold,” said Takeuchi, who expressed a desire to combine multiple types of cells to create a complex system that functions as a living organism.