Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Mini-Livers Made By 3D Printer
Tiny livers have been printed in the lab by Organovo in San Diego, California. These mini-livers are just four millimeters across and half a millimeter deep, but they perform most of the functions of real livers.
(Organovo 3D prints mini-livers)
To create them, a printer builds up about 20 layers of hepatocytes and stellate cells – two major types of liver cell. Crucially, it also adds cells from the lining of blood vessels. These form a delicate mesh of channels that supply the liver cells with nutrients and oxygen, allowing the tissue to live for five days or longer. The cells come from spare tissue removed in operations and biopsies.Existing liver assays, based on single or double layers of cells, only last two days and don't have the same range of functions as the micro-discs.
The realistic structure and functioning of the mini-livers make them good predictors of the toxicity of drugs and other substances. They produce albumin, the liver protein that bulks up blood and ferries hormones, salts and drugs throughout the body. They also make cholesterol, which carries fat in the bloodstream, and produce major detoxification enzymes, called cytochrome P450s, that metabolise drugs in the liver.
Artificially grown livers for transplantation was one of the issues discussed by science fiction writer Larry Niven in his 1968 novel A Gift from Earth:
...For a while your colonists will have to come up to the Hospital to get treatment with the ramrobot symbiots, but eventually we can build culture tanks in Gamma and Delta and Eta."
(Read more about Larry Niven's artificially grown organs)
Via New Scientist.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 4/29/2013)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 7 )
Related News Stories - (" Medical ")
MIT Computerized Bionic Leg Is Part Of The User
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain, through the mediation of the electronic brain in the leg.' - Charles Recour, 1949.
Bone-Building Drug Evenity Approved
'Compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone...' - Edmond Hamilton, 1932.
BrainBridge Concept Transplant Of Human Head Proposed
'Briquet’s head seemed to think that to find and attach a new body to her head was as easy as to fit and sew a new dress.' - Alexander Belaev (1925)
Natural Gait With Prosthetic Connected To Nervous System
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain...' - Charles Recour, 1949.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
AI Operates An Excavator
'So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.'
US Army IBEX Exoskeleton Walks Troops Out Of Danger
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
