An idea hailing from Queensland could be the key to regrowing, repairing, and even replacing human tissue and organs, thanks to tiny gels called a “microfluidic”.
If you’ve ever had a cut and wondered why your skin can heal, even if other parts of your body don’t work the same way, you’ve had the same questions as many other before you. However, it seems like a group of clever scientists hailing from the Uniersity of Queensland could be getting closer to the reason with the development of a new tool to help them understand why.
It’s called a “microfluidic”, but beyond the jargon, the easy explanation is a tiny drop of liquid to study the function of molecules and cellular damage.
In short, tiny liquids that can help researchers and scientists understand what makes some thing regenerate and repair, and others that don’t.
At the University of Queensland, a new microfluidics tool has been built to help explore regenerative medicine in greater detail, while also noting that the technology could allow targeting delivery of drugs and advancements in tissue engineering.
“In a microgel droplet we can work with materials in ways that would otherwise have been impossible,” said Dr Ruirui Qiao, the lead on the project at the University of Queensland’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.
“But it is extremely tricky to create microgels capable of incubating living materials,” she said. “The technology we’ve created greatly simplifies the process — saving time and money — with an added option of changing the droplet’s function by simply changing the temperature.”
The developed tool “UQ-Surf” could be used to create tiny droplets used to house cells for delivery in the body, while also providing a way for researchers to study regenerative medicine under the microscope with these tiny droplets protecting the cargo inside.
While the field of regenerative medicine is still quite new, tiny drops could be the solution to helping researchers make heads or tails sense of the changes going on under the surface.
“The human skin already has the ability to renew and repair itself to some degree, and other organs like the liver also have regenerative capabilities. Researchers want to know what drives this and why other organs in our body do not have this ability,” said Dr Qiao.
“The quick answer is that regenerating, repairing, and replacing our organs and tissue is a distinct possibility, and something that researchers are very excited about. Progress in this field will depend on the knowledge we can gather on the human body at a cellular and molecular level, which is where microfluidics and tools like UQ-Surf come in.”
