TAILOR-MADE BODY PARTS

By BILL SANDERSON

Posted: 3:54 am
August 18, 2008

Fingertips, noses and kidneys may someday be grown to your body's specifications, thanks to a recent Columbia University breakthrough.

Biomedical-engineering Professor Sam Sia and doctoral student Brian Gillette have figured out how to grow cells on a computer-designed latticework of collagen fibers.

"[This discovery] might lead to putting together tissues or whole organs," said Gillette.

Collagen is a protein that helps bind cells and body parts together. "It's three-dimensional," Gillette said of the web. Three-dimensional collagen webs could be used to create systems of blood vessels and eventually entire organs like skin or kidneys.