Organ culture

Organ culture is a development from tissue culture methods of research, the organ culture is able to accurately model functions of an organ in various states and conditions by the use of the actual in vitro organ itself.

Parts of an organ or a whole organ can be cultured in vitro. The main objective is to maintain the architecture of the tissue and direct it towards normal development. In this technique, it is essential that the tissue is never disrupted or damaged. It thus requires careful handling. The media used for a growing organ culture are generally the same as those used for tissue culture. The techniques for organ culture can be classified into (i) those employing a solid medium and (ii) those employing liquid medium.

In April 2006, scientists reported a successful trial of seven bladders grown in-vitro and given to humans. A bladder has been cultured by Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A jawbone has been cultured at Columbia University, a lung has been cultured at Yale. A beating rat heart has been cultured by Doris Taylor at the University of Minnesota. An artificial kidney has been cultured by H. David Humes at the University of Michigan.

Silk cut from silkworm cocoons has been successfully used as growth scaffolding for heart tissue production. Heart tissue does not regenerate if damaged, so producing replacement patches is of great interest. The experiment used rat heart cells and produced functional heart tissue. In order to further test applications to humans as a cure, a way to transform human stem cells into heart tissue would have to be found.

In 2016, another test was done in which human cells were used to assemble intricately structured hearts. The hearts ultimately proved immature but proved we were yet one step further to making a heart from stem cells.

In Januari 2017, scientists from Salk Institute for Biological Studies managed to create a pig embryo that had part of its DNA, critical for the growth of organs, edited out. They then introduced human stem cells inside the pig embryo to have the human DNA fill in the gaps.

Embryonic organ culture is an easier alternative to normal organ culture derived from adult animals. The following are four techniques employed for embryonic organ culture.

The following are general steps in organ culture on plasma clots.

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