6 An Artificial Rat Limb

In 2015, a team of researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital made history when they published their unique research on creating limbs. The team, led by Dr. Harold Ott, successfully produced the world’s first bioartificial limb in the lab. To be more specific, they made an entire forelimb of a rat in a lab. Doesn’t that sound amazing?

This incredible feat was achieved by Dr. Ott’s lab by following a process known as “decellularization.” In the first step, his lab members removed all the cells from a live rat’s limb. Once the cells were removed, the scientists were left with a protein framework for the limb which was injected with live cells into the structure that formed muscle tissue and blood cells within a few weeks.

To check if the lab-grown limb is functional or not, the researchers applied small electrical charges to the muscle tissue, and guess what? The muscles in the forelimb behaved exactly like a naturally grown organ would do. (source)

7 Mini Brains

This may remind you of a scene from any sci-fi thriller movie where scientists are trying to transfer human consciousness, but lab-grown mini-brains are very real things. After years of research, scientists have successfully grown a mini-brain that functions exactly like a preterm infant’s brain. Brain-like collections of neurons were previously grown in the lab, but they didn’t show any activity that resembles a real brain until now.

To grow the organ in the lab, a group of researchers at the University of California, San Diego took adult skin or blood cells, known as “human pluripotent stem cells.” Those cells were reprogrammed, before growing them into neurons present in the cortex, the part of our brain responsible for controlling our thoughts and behavior.

While the synthetic organ was in the developing stage, researchers used tiny electrodes to quantify any kind of electrical activity generated by them. After just two months of waiting, the team recorded scattered brain-wave activity, similar to an immature human brain.

This landmark invention could help scientists study a wide range of neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as epilepsy, stroke, and schizophrenia. (source)

8 Mosquitoes

News channels around the globe are filled with reports of mosquitoes spreading deadly diseases, like dengue, malaria, and Zika. So, you might be wondering, why are people interested in creating more mosquitoes instead of controlling them? 

The answer to this question might surprise you. A biotech start-up, MosquitoMate, came up with an amazing idea of creating a special mosquito in the lab which can kill other deadly mosquitos carrying viruses harmful to humans.

The start-up company inserted a natural bacteria known as Wolbachia pipientis, capable of making insects sick, in the lab-grown Aedes albopictus, the same species that spread diseases in the wild. Now, here is the clever part. The US-based start-up only released the male Aedes albopictus, with high hopes that they will infect the wild female population while copulating with them. 

This unique innovation was recognized by the government, and in 2017, the US government approved the release of the special Aedes albopictus, also known as “Asian tiger mosquitos,” in 20 US states to combat wild disease-causing mosquitoes. (source)

9 Skin

When Japanese researchers published their research findings in 2016, people in medical research were shocked. The group of scientists at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in collaboration with the Tokyo University of Science successfully managed to grow complex skin tissue, with hair follicles and sebaceous glands in the lab.

The team then implanted the synthetic, three-dimensional tissues into live mice, which was followed by the formation of proper connections with other organs such as nerves and muscle fibers.

“Up until now, artificial skin development has been hampered by the fact that the skin lacked the important organs, such as hair follicles and exocrine glands, which allow the skin to play its important role in regulation,” the senior author of the article, Takashi Tsuji, said.

According to experts, this technology might take around 5–10 years to translate into humans. But, there is no doubt that their invention can change the lives of many people with burn injuries. (source) 

10 Vacanti Mouse

Two decades ago, Harvard surgeons, Joseph and his brother Charles Vacanti along with MIT engineer Bob Langer, decided to experiment with techniques to create human body parts in the lab. Their curiosity led them to conduct experiments to see how these human body parts or features would function inside other animals.

Finally, in 1997, the world was introduced to the “Vacanti mouse,” a hairless mouse with what appeared to be a human ear growing out of its back. It was another bizarre scientific experiment done with organ donation in mind and took the world by storm.

However, it’s worth noting that although it might look exactly like a human ear, it’s not real. The research group developed a way to fashion scaffolding in the shape of human ears made up of man-made biocompatible and bioabsorbable materials. Eventually, the ear was removed from the mouse and the tiny creature lived a normal life. (1, 2)