Longevity science

Researchers have created a self-supporting scaffolding of nanowires and coated it with a biocompatible material. They grew heart and nerve cells within this scaffold, which developed into a single structure with embedded nanowires.

With this technology, researchers can work at the cellular scale much more effectively, without damaging the cells and with the capability to observe cells from anywhere within the tissue.

Tissue engineering is definitely an exciting field – the ability to create living biological tissue in a lab could allow scientists to do things such as testing new drugs without the need for human subjects, or even to create patient-specific replacement organs or other body parts.

While some previous efforts have yielded finished products that were very small, a microfluidic device being developed at the University of Toronto can reportedly produce sections of precisely-engineered tissue that measure within the centimeters.