Revitalizing Brain Organoids: A Breakthrough in Vascular Integration
Imago/Alamy
A pioneering advancement has been made in growing a miniaturized version of the developing cerebral cortex, crucial for cognitive functions like thinking, memory, and problem-solving, complete with a realistic vascular system. This advancement in brain organoids offers unprecedented insights into brain biology and pathology.
Brain organoids, often referred to as “mini-brains,” are produced by exposing stem cells to specific biochemical signals in a laboratory setting, encouraging them to form self-organizing cellular spheres. Since their inception in 2013, these organoids have significantly contributed to research on conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, and dementia.
However, these organoids have a significant limitation: they typically start to deteriorate after only a few months. This degradation occurs because a full-sized brain has an intricate network of blood vessels that supply essential oxygen and nutrients, while organoids can only absorb these elements from their growth medium, leading to nutrient deprivation for the innermost cells. “This is a critical issue,” remarks Lois Kistemaker from Utrecht University Medical Center in the Netherlands.
To mitigate this issue, Ethan Winkler and researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, devised a method to cultivate human stem cells for two months, resulting in “cortical organoids” that closely resemble the developing cerebral cortex. They then introduced organoids composed of vascular cells, strategically placing them at either end of each cortical organoid, facilitating the formation of a vascular network throughout the mini-brain.
Crucially, imaging studies revealed that the blood vessels in these mini-brains possess hollow centers, or lumens, akin to those found in natural blood vessels. “The establishment of a vascular network featuring lumens similar to authentic blood vessels is impressive,” states Madeline Lancaster, a pioneer in organoid research at the University of Cambridge. “This represents a significant progression.”
Past attempts to incorporate blood vessels within brain organoids have failed to achieve this crucial detail; previous studies typically resulted in unevenly distributed vessels throughout the organoids. In contrast, the blood vessels formed in this new experiment exhibit properties and genetic activities more closely aligned with those in actual developing brains, thereby establishing a more effective “blood-brain barrier.” This barrier protects the brain from harmful pathogens while permitting the passage of nutrients and waste, according to Kistemaker.
The implications of these findings indicate that blood vessels are crucial for delivering nutrient-rich fluids necessary for sustaining organoids. Professor Lancaster emphasizes, “To function properly, blood vessels, similar to the heart, require a mechanism for continuous blood flow, ensuring that deoxygenated blood is replaced with fresh, oxygen-rich blood or a suitable substitute.”
As I explore the fascinating world of lichens, I often find myself captivated by their unique growths on tree branches, rocky outcrops, and gravestones. Although I have encountered numerous lichens during my research on symbiosis, discovering them in a laboratory flask swirling in an incubator was a novel experience. Recently, I’ve begun to contemplate the insights lichens can provide, not just about our past but about the potential for our future.
The green liquid in the incubator may not resemble typical lichen, as this is actually a synthetic alternative. According to Rodrigo Ledesma Amaro, director at the Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein, this co-culture comprises fungi (yeast) and cyanobacteria. Much like natural lichens, the fungal component acts as a structural host while cyanobacteria leverage sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to create sugars during photosynthesis.
What drives the creation of such “potion”? As Ledesma-Amaro explains, genetically edited yeast can produce useful products—food, fuels, and medications—which can be created sustainably through photosynthesis. Today’s synthetic lichens present exciting opportunities within the biotechnology sector. They hold potential for repairing infrastructures, mitigating climate change, and even crafting habitats on Mars.
“Synthetic lichens replicate the symbiotic nature of natural lichens but grow significantly faster,” says Ledesma-Amaro. Their use of yeast facilitates large-scale production of valuable compounds, like caryophyllene—a vital ingredient in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and fuel. Notably, alternative synthetic lichens could be engineered for carbon capture and storage, while ongoing research pursues their use in revitalizing aging concrete structures worldwide. The future application of lichens could even extend beyond Earth, with NASA exploring ways to cultivate engineered lichens on the Moon and Mars for building purposes.
The Science of Symbiosis
Though unassuming, lichens exemplify the essence of symbiosis, where diverse species coexist harmoniously. Typically, lichens consist of fungal partners that host photobionts—algae or bacteria—that produce food through photosynthesis while the fungus shelters them. This arrangement enables lichens to thrive in extreme conditions, fostering scientific interest in creating synthetic counterparts.
Lichens demonstrate two key benefits: their interdependent nature allows them to accomplish more together than individually, and their resilience enables survival in harsh environments. In some regions like Svalbard, where around 700 lichen species exist, they tolerate frigid temperatures, salinity, and other extreme conditions. Curious scientists continue to explore how these organisms endure aridity and temperature fluctuations.
Lichens represent a fascinating life form sustained through a symbiotic relationship.
Jose B. Luis/naturepl.com
Researchers propose that lichen resilience stems from biomolecules formed by filamentous fungi, which provide protection to the entire community. Moreover, their slow growth allows them to persist with minimal resources. Together, these qualities offer lichens unique advantages over single-species organisms.
Space Lichens: The Future of Exploration
These attributes have sparked interest from NASA due to lichens’ ability to withstand simulated and real space conditions. For instance, lichens like Cirquinaria girosa survived outside the International Space Station for over 18 months. Their capacity for growth within rocks and survival in space conditions has intrigued scientists and advocates alike.
Kongrui Jin, a biomaterials engineer at Texas A&M University, recognizes the potential of lichens in future space habitats. Proposals for extraterrestrial homes often use inflatable structures, reducing the need to transport materials from Earth. However, opportunities exist to produce building materials directly from Martian regolith using lichen-based solutions.
Lichens have survived in space, proving their resilience and adaptability.
ESA
“We aim to merge these fungi with photosynthetic species like cyanobacteria,” Jin elaborates. “This combination can convert sunlight into organic nutrients while binding Martian soil particles into cohesive structures.” The biomaterials produced could be utilized with 3D printing technology for constructing habitats.
Jin’s research illustrates the potential of lichens in transforming Martian regolith into conducive building materials. They also offer routes toward producing biominerals and biopolymers, leading some futurists to envision them as key players in terraforming Mars. Yet even without strict planetary protection measures, lichens will need shielding from the harsh Martian surface conditions to flourish.
The Future of Architecture with Lichens
While colonizing other planets remains a distant goal, the application of lichens offers immediate benefits on Earth. They can aid in bundling rubble for construction, notably in rebuilding after natural or human-made disasters. Furthermore, incorporating methods that sequester carbon in concrete production could significantly lessen its environmental impact.
Jin and her colleagues successfully demonstrated that integrating lichen-based combinations of fungi and cyanobacteria can grow in concrete, precipitating calcium carbonate to repair structural cracks efficiently. “This method shows much higher survival rates compared to other microbes in challenging conditions,” she states. These synthetic lichens can extract nitrogen from the air, negating the need for external nutrient supplementation.
Meanwhile, Khakhar is exploring ways to enhance lichen growth by selecting and modifying fast-growing microorganisms. His lab is developing synthetic lichens similar to Jin’s, paving the way for sustainable production of building materials through biomanufacturing, termed “mycomaterials.”
My journey into the world of symbiosis reveals that lichens embody complex ecosystems—a vivid lesson in interdependence and their futuristic potential in shaping our materials. The next time you encounter a lichen adorning a tree or tombstone, take a moment to reflect on the incredible possibilities these organisms hold for our future.
Difficult-to-create diamonds, eluding scientists for years, can now be synthesized in labs, allowing the production of exceptionally challenging cutting and drilling tools.
Diamonds are known for their cubic atomic structure, yet for over 60 years, researchers have recognized the existence of a much tougher hexagonal diamond form.
Natural hexagonal diamonds are found in certain metamorphic rocks, referred to by the mineral name Ronzderate, but they only occur together with cubic diamonds. Earlier efforts to synthesize hexagonal diamonds yielded only minute quantities of impure variants.
Recently, Ho-Kwang Mao and his team at the Advanced Research Center for High Pressure Science and Technology in Beijing successfully produced relatively large hexagonal diamond samples measuring 1 mm in diameter and 70 micrometers thick.
While researchers have synthesized regular diamonds for some time, they state, “We explored various pressures and temperatures to identify optimal conditions for producing hexagonal diamonds. This includes 1400°C at a pressure of 20 Gigapascals, which is about 200,000 times the Earth’s atmospheric pressure.”
As these materials are unprecedented, Mao indicated a comprehensive investigation is necessary to ascertain their properties. “It’s extremely valuable,” he explains. “However, once the synthesis process is understood, anyone can replicate it. Thus, securing a patent and discovering ways to reduce production costs are critical.”
Predictions suggest hexagonal diamonds might be around 60% more rigid than conventional diamonds based on their structure. Cubic diamonds have a hardness rating of about 115, as measured by Vickers hardness tests. The hexagonal diamonds synthesized by Mao’s group exhibit a rating of 120 Gigapascals, which they believe could improve with further refinement of their techniques.
If hexagonal diamonds can be fabricated to sufficient thickness, they could be utilized to create more robust and resilient industrial tools for applications like geothermal energy drilling, according to James Elliott from Cambridge University. “Naturally, as you drill deeper, temperatures rise, which may enable exploration at greater depths.”
The machine delivers nutrient-rich liquids to artificial chicken fibers
Takeuchi, University of Tokyo
Thick-sized chicken fillets are grown in the lab using small tubes, mimicking the capillaries found in real muscles. Researchers say this gives the product a texture of Chue.
When growing thick pieces of cultured meat, one major problem is that the central cells are dead and broken because they don’t get enough oxygen or nutrients. Takeuchi Kami At the University of Tokyo.
“This leads to necrosis and makes it difficult to grow meat with texture and taste,” he says. “Our goal was to solve this by creating a way that evenly delivers cells throughout the tissue, as blood vessels do within the body. “What if we could use hollow fibers to create artificial capillaries?”
The fibers used by Takeuchi and his colleagues were inspired by similar hollow tubes used in the medical industry, such as kidney dialysis. To create lab-grown meat, the team essentially wanted to create an artificial circulation system. “Dialysis fibers are used to filter waste from the blood,” Takeuchi says. “Our fibers are designed to feed live cells.”
First, researchers 3D printed small frames to hold and grow cultured meat, and installed over 1,000 hollow fibers using robotic tools. This sequence was then embedded in a gel containing living cells.
“We created a ‘meat growth device’ using a hollow fiber array,” Takeuchi says. “We placed collagen gel around the cells and fibers of live chickens. Then we poured nutrient-rich liquid into the hollow fibers, allowing them to flow through capillaries. For several days the cells were aligned with the muscle tissue and formed a thick, steak-like structure.”
The resulting cultured chicken weighed 11 grams and was 2 cm thick. Takeuchi says that the texture was improved as the tissues had a one-way alignment of muscle fibers. “We also discovered that the heart of meat is healthy and healthy, unlike the way the centre dies.”
While meat was not considered suitable for human taste testing, mechanical analysis showed good bite and flavor markers, Takeuchi says.
Manipulating hollow fibers could potentially allow you to simulate different meat fillets, he says. “Changing the spacing, direction, or flow patterns of the fibers may allow us to mimic a variety of textures, including softer, chewy meats.”
Johannes Le Cartre While an impressive study at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, he says the process is difficult to implement on an industrial scale. “[The] The Holy Grail across this sector is expanding new technology,” he says.
Stem cells are produced in the bone marrow and develop into different types of blood cells.
Katerina Conn / SPL/ Alamy
Human blood stem cells have been grown in a laboratory for the first time, which could dramatically improve how certain types of cancer are treated.
The lab-grown cells have so far only been tested in mice, but when injected into the animals, they resulted in functional bone marrow similar to levels seen after umbilical cord blood cell transplants.
Treating cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma with radiation and chemotherapy can destroy blood-forming cells in the bone marrow. A stem cell transplant means new healthy bone marrow and blood cells can grow. The umbilical cord is a particularly rich source of stem cells, but there is a limited amount they can provide, and the transplant may be rejected by the body.
The new method allows researchers to create stem cells from actual patients, eliminating supply issues and reducing the risk that the patient's body will reject the stem cells.
First, they transformed human blood and skin cells into so-called pluripotent stem cells through a process called reprogramming. “This involves temporarily switching on four genes, so that the patient's cells revert to an earlier stage of development that can become any cell in the body,” he said. Andrew Elefanti At the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne.
The second step is to turn the pluripotent cells into blood stem cells. “You start by making thousands of tiny, free-floating balls of cells, each containing a few hundred cells, and then you induce them to turn from stem cells to blood vessels to blood cells,” Elefanti says. This process, called differentiation, takes about two weeks and produces millions of blood cells, he says.
When these cells were then injected into mice that lack immune systems, they produced functional bone marrow in up to 50 percent of cases. That means they made the same cells that carry oxygen and fight infection as healthy human bone marrow, Elefanti says. “This unique ability to make all blood cell types over an extended period of time defines them as blood stem cells,” he says.
Abbas Shafi A researcher from the University of Queensland in Brisbane said the work was an “exciting step forward” towards new treatments for blood cancers. “It's never been done before and has great potential for the future.” But even once animal testing is complete, he said a lot of human research still needs to be done before the technique can be used in the clinic.
Simon Cohn Researchers at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, say a key advantage of their approach is that it can be scaled up to produce “an essentially limitless supply” of blood stem cells, but they add that the work is based on blood or skin cells, and success rates and blood cell diversity depend on the starting cell type.
“This suggests that treatments are inconsistent even at the preclinical stage in mice, and will need to be addressed before clinical trials in human patients,” he says.
Lab-grown meat could potentially taste better thanks to aroma chemicals that activate when cooked and give off a meaty scent – or, if you prefer, coffee or potato.
Meat grown from cell cultures has already been produced in a variety of forms, such as steaks and meatballs, that resemble slaughtered meat, but matching the taste has proven harder: The flavor of traditional meat is too complex and unstable to withstand the lengthy lab process.
One of the key components of cooked meat's flavor is the Maillard reaction, named after the French chemist who discovered that temperatures between 140 and 165°C (280 and 330°F) give cooked foods their distinctive flavor. Jinkee Hong Researchers at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, say they have devised a way to simulate the Maillard reaction by adding “switchable flavour compounds” (SFCs) to a 3D gelatin-based hydrogel called a “scaffold” that remains stable during meat cultivation.
When heated to 150°C, the chemicals “switch on” and release flavors, making the cultured protein more palatable: “When we heated SFC, it actually tasted like meat,” Hong says, though he declined to confirm whether the team actually ate meat.
These SFCs can also be used to create different flavor profiles. For example, the researchers say they tested three compounds, which produced flavors that mimicked roasted meat, coffee, roasted nuts, onion and potatoes. “You can diversify and customize the flavor compounds released from the SFCs,” Hong says.
One big problem is that the chemicals involved are not currently considered safe for human consumption. “Because the materials and culture media have not been approved as edible materials, we cannot guarantee their safety,” Hong says. “However, our strategy can be applied to conventional edible materials and we believe it would be safer than the materials we used in this study.”
Johannes Le Couteur Researchers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, said they were skeptical of the study for a number of reasons, including that the flavor tests primarily used electronic noses to evaluate chemicals released, rather than humans judging whether a scent was appetizing.
“This type of material cannot feed humans,” Le Coutur said. “While cell-based meat is a promising technology concept, this particular flavoring method will never be able to provide safe, sustainable protein to low- and moderate-income communities in need.”
Like it or not, the leather industry is a major contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and global waste generation. Current methods being used to meet the increasing demand for leather involve very simple and completely unsustainable solutions. It is simply raising more livestock (this is 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions).
But now there are startups leading the way in developing bio-based alternatives that have properties similar to, or even better than, traditional leather.
Alternative leather startup gelatex To date, we have raised $1.3 million from Estonia. Based in Copenhagen, Beyond leather We produce plant-based, eco-friendly alternatives to animal leather. It has raised 1.2 million euros so far.
Vitro Lab The San Jose-based company has raised $54.4 million and is developing a platform to make leather using stem cell-based technology. Meanwhile, modern meadow is working on lab-grown leather (among other materials) and has raised $183.6 million.
As you can see, there is a lot of interest in this area.
Now, a startup originally from Turkey and now based in San Francisco thinks it has come up with a game-changing product.
Gozen has now raised $3.3 million in a seed funding round led by Happiness Capital (lead investor) with participation from Accelr8, Astor Management, and Valley-based SOSV. The company is currently planning a facility in Turkey with a production capacity of up to 1 million square feet.
The startup’s biomaterial Lunaform is vegan, plastic-free, and produced by microorganisms during the fermentation process. The material is intended for use in the fashion and automotive industries, and the company has patented the technology in Turkey and is applying for patents in other countries.
The material was unveiled at the Balenciaga Summer 24 show during Paris Fashion Week earlier last month.
Gozen said Lunaform is a unique, fully formed material that ultimately provides increased strength and flexibility. (Using multiple layers of plant-based composite leather makes it more susceptible to damage). With customizable thickness and texture, he can be produced in 13 square foot sheets.
Ese Gozen, founder and CEO of GOZEN, told me over the phone: We use a fermentation transplantation system that creates the material in just 10 days. Now that the formulation is solid, it’s time to harvest it. This is microbial cellulose, which is another type of cellulose. ”
She said the resulting material was “very strong and very thin.” The current material is 0.2mm, giving it a unique texture. Contains no plastic or toxic chemicals. ”
He added that he has a startup plan that aims not only for fashion but also for the automobile industry.
Poe Bronson, managing director of SOSV IndieBio, Gozen’s first investor, added in a statement: However, I believed that your approach could outperform other approaches in both performance and economy. ”
No matter what happens, the market is growing.
The global leather products market size is projected It is expected to grow from $468.49 billion in 2023 to $738.61 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 6.7%.
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