Growing living tissue and organs in the lab would be a life-saving trick. But replicating the complexity of an organ, by growing different types of cells in precisely the right arrangement—muscle held together with connective tissue and threaded with blood vessels, for example—is currently impossible. Researchers at MIT have taken a step toward this goal by coming up with a way to make "building blocks" containing different kinds of tissue that can be put together.Embryonic stem cells can turn into virtually any type of cell in the body. But controlling this process, known as differentiation, is tricky. If embryonic stem cells are left to grow in a tissue-culture dish, they will differentiate more or less at random, into a mixture of different types of cells.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Organs Made from Scratch - Technology Review
Author: Katherine Bourzac
