Synthetic tissue can repair hearts, muscles, and vocal cords:
"People recovering from heart damage often face a long and tricky journey. Healing is challenging because of the constant movement tissues must withstand as the heart beats. The same is true for vocal cords. Until now there was no injectable material strong enough for the job," says Guangyu Bao, a PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University.
The team, led by Professor Luc Mongeau and Assistant Professor Jianyu Li, developed a new injectable hydrogel for wound repair. The hydrogel is a type of biomaterial that provides room for cells to live and grow. Once injected into the body, the biomaterial forms a stable, porous structure allowing live cells to grow or pass through to repair the injured organs.
"The results are promising, and we hope that one day the new hydrogel will be used as an implant to restore the voice of people with damaged vocal cords, for example laryngeal cancer survivors," says Guangyu Bao.
The scientists tested the durability of their hydrogel in a machine they developed to simulate the extreme biomechanics of human vocal cords. Vibrating at 120 times a second for over 6 million cycles, the new biomaterial remained intact while other standard hydrogels fractured into pieces, unable to deal with the stress of the load.
Journal Reference:
Sareh Taheri, Guangyu Bao, Zixin He, et al. Injectable, Pore‐Forming, Perfusable Double‐Network Hydrogels Resilient to Extreme Biomechanical Stimulations [open], Advanced Science (DOI: 10.1002/advs.202102627)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01 2021, @04:57PM (4 children)
I figure we'll be able to clone livers and kidneys within a few decades, but heart repair seems intractable. This will save lives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01 2021, @05:19PM (2 children)
There were a lot of fully synthetic heart transplants recently.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01 2021, @07:00PM
we want to live longer 'cause "tomorrow will be better"?
just kidding, i want to live long enough to see "AVATAR V", so another ..uhm ..ahh... 80 years?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01 2021, @07:29PM
Well, they try, but generally it's just for a month or so until a transplant is available. And they have awkward external pumps or batteries. It's not a long-term solution at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 02 2021, @12:07AM
I would prefer a vaccine myself. Or one drug that is both a cure and a vaccine.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday December 01 2021, @07:53PM (1 child)
Until we get viable brain prosthetics/transplants this just puts off the inevitable. Having a repaired heart/kidney/liver is not wonderful if your brain has descended into Alzheimer mush.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01 2021, @08:09PM
You just take the Alzheimer's vaccine [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01 2021, @09:33PM
As long as this isn't a repeat of that mesh stuff, that ended up messing a whole bunch of women up.