It’s no secret there’s an organ shortage in the United States and elsewhere throughout the world.
Each day, 79 people on average receive organ transplants in the U.S. At the same time, 22 people on average die waiting for a transplant, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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Learn MoreThe global shortage has some of the world’s greatest minds working toward solutions. They include a team of Brown University bioengineers and researchers developing new tools that could someday create replacement organs.
“We’re trying to develop the technologies of the future to build tissues and organs,” said Jeffrey R. Morgan, professor of medical science and engineering at Brown.
Morgan in 2014 received a three-year, $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation for his research on microtissues. His research has led to varying discoveries, including a new tissue-building device called “BioP3,” short for “pick, place and perfuse.” It has the ability to pick up preassembled microtissues, move and align them into stacks and then pump fluid through them.
The goal is to replicate tissue and organs and keep them alive at a microlevel, and then one day scale up to actual-sized tissues and organs, which might be used for humans with failing organs.
However, Morgan says candidly, the research is still a long way off from fruition.
“Everyone should sign up to be an organ donor,” Morgan said. “But it’s exciting because … we’re taking steps in that direction.”
The BioP3 device was made possible because of Morgan’s earlier research, which resulted in the creation of the 3-D petri dish. The device, similar to 3-D bio-printing, directs cells to self-assemble and create various shapes, which can be used in different ways depending on the desire of the researcher.
The culture-making platform is the basis for Morgan’s biomedical company he founded in Providence called MicroTissues Inc. Sigma-Aldrich Corp., a multinational chemical, life science and biotechnology company, distributes and sells the technology commercially to researchers around the globe.
“When you go from 2-D – from a flat plastic dish – to 3-D, amazing things can happen,” Morgan said. “It becomes more tissue-like and more organ-like, and becomes closer to what a real tissue or organ does.”
The platform has also allowed for the development of miniscule organs, or “mini organs,” which researchers hope to use for more rapid and effective “toxicity testing” – a safety assessment that determines how damaging a substance can be to a living organism.
“Two things are at play here, these mini organs are made of human cells, which means they’re closer to the human condition,” Morgan said. “What we’ve worked out is a high-throughput screening format, which means in one plate we can do 96 experiments. … We can test chemicals, various doses, and then get a read out of lots of data saying what’s dangerous at what kind of dose.”
The research could one day alleviate the amount of toxicity testing done on animals, which have historically – and controversially – been used in this type of assessment.
“[It] could potentially reduce the need for animals in research,” Morgan said.
As for the BioP3 device, the Brown team’s main focus right now is on optimizing the perfusion part of the equation, which is – in basic terms – the passage of fluid through the vessels of an organ.
“Nobody has done that yet,” Morgan said. “Our mechanics are pretty well-done. We can pick and place and perfuse.”
Morgan says the team is developing one of multiple technologies right now in the world that’s designed to address the unmet medical need of organ availability, and he’s hopeful to publish an article updating and detailing the progress of its work within the next six months.
There’s no way of telling when a breakthrough in any of the research might happen, but Morgan – who’s in the lab nearly every day – is confident in telling his students, “Your generation will build organs. It’s just a question of how.”
“There’s an obvious need of the people who’re on the transplant list,” Morgan added. “If organs became affordable and available, then it would change the practice of medicine in ways I can’t imagine. … This is what bioengineering is supposed to do.” •