The ‘mini bones’ that researcher Bregje de Wildt has grown in the lab can be used to test medicines. For example, for people with a bone disease, or patients whose bone fracture is so large that it does not recover properly.
At the moment, animal testing is often used to develop treatments. “But 90 percent of the medicines that are successful in animals ultimately turn out to be unsuitable for humans,” says De Wildt of Eindhoven University of Technology. This is because the cells are very different from each other and behave differently.
Less animal testing
We may be able to do away with animal testing in the future, according to her doctoral research. De Wildt researched different ways to grow mini bones from human cells, and succeeded. To do this, she sowed specialized stem cells onto a spongy material in a tube. “Then it has to grow in the lab for four weeks.”
Bones are constantly changing structure, she explains. “That happens very slowly. Every year about twenty percent of the bone renews itself. Every five years you have a completely renewed bone – although that can depend on hormones and stress.”
New medicines for bone diseases can be tested on this cultured bone tissue in the future, so that fewer animal tests are needed. At least, that is what De Wildt hopes. “I’ve taken the first step to grow the mini-bots, in the future they may actually function.”
Other body parts
Scientists also grow many other types of tissues themselves. For example mini intestines, kidneys and brains. “First of all, we do this to test medicines,” researcher Debby Gawlitta of UMC Utrecht tells Editie NL.
“In addition, we grow diseased and healthy tissues side by side in order to better understand certain diseases. A third reason is to make larger tissues that we eventually want to implant in humans, for example to restore missing bone tissue. But that is still very complex.”
Cultivate a complete human being
Will we ever be able to recreate a whole person? “I don’t know. We’re certainly not there yet. We can now make many different types of fabric, as big as pinheads, but they can’t do what fabric really can do. Moreover, they are a kind of Lego blocks that you put on top of each other. can stack, but they don’t communicate with each other,” says Gawlitta. “But I also don’t know if we should want to, grow a whole person.”