Tissue engineering, the new model for healing

Kristi S. Anseth, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Colorado breaks barriers almost obliviously. In do...

Kristi S. Anseth, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Colorado breaks barriers almost obliviously. In doing so, she is helping change the culture of science.

At 37, she is professor in a field once the sole province of bookish men. She is also the first engineer to become a Howard Hughes medical investigator, a prize usually reserved for Nobel-worthy researchers in basic sciences. In 2004, she won the 500,000 Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation.

She got the honours for her work in tissue engineering. She has developed innovative methods for growing bones, skin and cartilage. 8216;8216;I think tissue engineering is something that appeals because many of us can relate to the promise of the field,8217;8217; Dr. Anseth says. She spoke to New York Times8217; CLAUDIA DREIFUS.

Give us the job description of a tissue engineer, please.
We start with the building blocks, cells, proteins or molecules, and reassemble them into something that becomes living tissues within the body. In terms of progress in things related to our cartilage, bones, skin, we8217;re likely to see products within 5 to 10 years. The really big impact areas 8212; treatments for Parkinson8217;s disease and diabetes 8212; will happen later, within my lifetime.

How does an engineer rebuild eroded kneecaps of humans?
Through a process called scaffolding. You need live cartilage cells. They can come from other parts of the body where extras exist. You create scaffolding with synthetic materials like degradable plastics. This gives cells a structure to grow around. You then decorate the scaffold with the live cells, and as they grow, the scaffolding plastic breaks down. With time, you8217;re just left with a natural construction.

So it might soon be possible to get a nose job and a knee fix in one operation?
It could work like that. There are places in the body where you have extra cartilage. The nose is one of them. But I can8217;t just put nose cartilage cells randomly into your kneecap and get something useful. The transplanted cartilage doesn8217;t know what shape to mould the tissue. That8217;s where scaffolding comes in.

I understand you got some of your ideas for scaffolding from watching how dentists work.
Well, yes. The work we8217;ve been doing on broken bones has some of that. Bones are tissues that can heal. We began by asking, what influences how a bone heals? That led us to design these Play-Doh like materials similar to what dentists use. These are materials used to fill in bone defects like cracks and breaks; exposing them to light activates them. They then release molecules that increase healing rate. Eventually, the materials degrade. There will be products in near future useful for skull fractures and cranial-facial bone problems. Further in the distance are products for broken legs. That8217;s tougher because leg bones have to do everything that other bones do, but they also have to bear body weight.

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Do you think tissue engineers will use the highly malleable stem cells in their work?
That8217;s a good question. Tissue engineers need a source of cells, but our bodies are not just a collection of cells. Cells are organised in complex three-dimensional modes. Tissue engineering tries to give them an environment that gets them to recreate themselves. Stem cells have a lot of promise for that. But even if we have stem cells, we still have to apply tissue-engineering principles to deliver drugs and proteins to the right place at the right time.

Did you always want to grow up and be a scientist?
I grew up in a small town in north Dakota. There weren8217;t a lot of scientists as role models in this small community. I8217;m not sure I even knew a scientist growing up, except maybe a science teacher in school. But I was always trying to understand how things worked. Science excited me, and I excelled in mathematics. So the advice was, 8216;8216;go into engineering8217;8217;. Nobody said, 8216;8216;Girls don8217;t do things like science.8217;8217; When I said I wanted to go into chemical engineering, I8217;m not sure anyone knew what that was, but they all said: 8216;8216;Great! What can we do to help you find a good college?8217;8217;

Getting back to your research, how do you answer people who say that tissue engineering sounds a bit like the imaginings of Dr Frankenstein?
I understand. It can sound that way. But what we8217;re trying to do is help your body undergo a healing process. Sometimes, the body doesn8217;t know how to heal by itself, and so we8217;re helping it. We8217;re not manipulating cells. It8217;s using your own cells. Nothing synthetic is left. It8217;s truly your own tissues.