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Gabor Forgacs, professor
of biological physics, specializes in regenerative medicine.
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Researcher Develops Organ Transplants of the Future
By Jennifer Faddis
A healing cut or a developing embryo are examples of what a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher calls a hallmark of living systems — biological self-assembly. A team of scientists led by Gabor Forgacs, professor of biological physics at MU, received nearly $5 million from the National Science Foundation to answer the fundamental biological question: What controls this self-assembly process? The answer could help provide breakthroughs in regenerative medicine by means of a new process called organ printing, developed by Forgacs' team.
“We probably will never learn exactly
how biological self-assembly works, but we will not need to,”
Forgacs said. “What we want to know is how to control self-assembly
and be able to mimic what the biological system does. Once we
understand the fundamental organizing principles that control
this self-assembly and the cues that are necessary to provide
to the system, we can use that knowledge in our organ printing
technology.”
Organ printing will be one tool in this research,
according to Forgacs. The team is developing a system that takes
cells from a patient with a damaged organ, blood vessel or heart
valve and uses those cells to “print” a replacement
organ. Bio-printing could solve many transplantation problems;
it would eliminate the need for people to be on long waiting lists
for transplants and, since the cells used to belong to the patient,
there would be no worry of rejection or infection.
“Transplantation as we know it today
is not the future; artificial substitutes are not the future;
this is the future.” said Forgacs, referring to organ printing.
“It is quick and relatively simple. A number of fundamental
questions have to be answered first, but these do not seem to
be insurmountable.”
The research team, assembled by Forgacs, was
one of nearly 100 competing for the NSF awards. The project —
Understanding and Employing Tissue Self-Assembly — brings
together seven investigators from the areas of biological physics,
computational physics, molecular biology, developmental biology,
organic chemistry and tissue engineering. As part of the grant,
several science centers have expressed interest in displaying
organ printing: The New York
Hall of Science, the Utah
Science Center, the Saint Louis
Science Center and the Kansas
City Science Center.
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Last Update:
November 15, 2007
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