Robots can now grow human organs
Robots can now grow human organs
By Raquel Laneri May 21, 2018 | 2:48pm | Updated
Is there anything
robots can’t do? They can perform our jobs, get periods and now . . . grow human organs.
Scientists at the University of Washington School of
Medicine have developed an automated system that uses
robots to produce human mini-organs from stem cells. According to Science Daily, the ability to mass
produce “organoids” promises to expand the use of mini-organs in basic research
and drug discovery.
“This is a new ‘secret weapon’ in our fight against
disease,” the university’s Benjamin Freedman tells Science Daily.
Before, scientists would grow cells for biomedical
research by culturing them into flat sheets. But these were too simplistic to
truly mimic the ways true cells behaved. More recently, researchers have had
some success growing these cells into more complex, and three-dimensional,
structures called mini-organs.
This new development, however, allows them to
produce these organoids at a rapid pace. It’s the first time researchers have
been able to mass-produce these mini-organs from stem cells.
“Ordinarily, just setting up an experiment of this
magnitude would take a researcher all day, while the robot can do it in 20
minutes,” Freedman tells Science Daily. “On top of that, the robot doesn’t get
tired and make mistakes. . . . There’s no question — for repetitive, tedious
tasks like this, robots do a better job than humans.”
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