A UCL scientist is leading the effort to grow noses, ears and blood vessels in a laboratory in a bold attempt to make body parts using stem cells.
The parts, grown in vitro at the Royal Free London Hospital, could be used to help victims of disfigurement and there is scope to extend the process to major internal organs as well.
Professor Alexander Seifalian, Professor of Nanotechnology & Regenerative Medicine at UCL, and his team use a combination of stem cell research and 3D printing, with a dash of nanotechnology, to create the body parts.
Professor Seifalian says: “It's like making a cake, we just use a different kind of oven.”
The first step is to create a 3D-printed glass mould of the required organ produced from CT scans of the patient. Then, using nanocomposite materials of his own patented design, Professor Seifalian fills the mould and adds salt. Once set, the mould is placed in water where the salt dissolves, leaving behind a honeycomb scaffold for stem cells to adhere to.
At this point the team requires stem cells from the patient, a process that used to be quite gruelling. In the past, the only way to obtain enough stem cells would be to make repeated surgical incisions to obtain samples of cartilage from the patient's ribs. Now the team needs only to make one incision, to the abdomen, where they remove fat cells to add to the scaffold.
After that, the ‘construction site’ is kept at the right conditions for growth and then implanted sub-dermally on the host for four to eight weeks.
Professor Seifalian said: “The difficult part was to develop a material acceptable by the human body without rejection or any immunological response.”
Professor Seifalian’s research has been made possible following a grant from the Wellcome Trust. On the subject of extending this process to major internal organs Professor Seifalian said: “We are working hard working on clinical trials and commercialisation and hope the trachea, heart bypass graft, stent, and facial organ (i.e. ear and nose) will be commercialised with three years”.
Professor Seifalian also has a project funded by the BRC at the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst, the UK’s first open innovation bioscience campus where BRC funding has meant that UCL industry-reading projects are able to take up lab space and access drug development expertise and facilities.
