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October 13, 2024
Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have grown a human-like ear from animal tissue.
The ear is quite flexible and able to bend like a real ear. It is expected that in about five years, this procedure will be used to make an ear for those that are missing or have deformed outer ears, say scientists.
The technique used for growing the ear is called “tissue engineering.”
In the latest research, cells were grown on a titanium wire scaffold. The scaffold was a 3D mould of a real human ear.
The mould was developed using CT scans of a real ear.
Massachusetts General Hospital’s Dr. Thomas Cervantes, the team lead of the research, said, “In a clinical model, what we would do is harvest a small sample of cartilage, that the patient has, and then expand that so we could go ahead and do the same process.”
He added, “This research is a significant step forward in preparing the tissue-engineered ear for human clinical trials.”
The term “tissue engineering” refers to is a relatively new field of medical sciences in which various organs are made in laboratory in the hope that they would be able to replace defected ones.
“This research is a significant step forward in preparing the tissue-engineered ear for human clinical trials,” said Cervantes.
Artificial living ears have been a focus of research for quite some time now. These ears are developed for people who are born with deformed ears or who have lost them to injury.
An artificial ear has been grown in the past. The size of the ear was equivalent to a baby’s.
Information on the artificial ear grown was published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Tissues of cows and sheep were taken and these were grown into the shape of an ear using a flexible wire frame. The frame was a 3D mould in the shape of a real human ear.
The ear was then planted onto a mouse whose immune system did not allow the ear to grow.
“We’ve demonstrated the first full-sized adult human ear on the rat model,” said Dr. Cervantes.
Source Vancouver Desi