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| CSIRO | SOLVE | Issue 8 | Aug 06 | |
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ARTICLE
 TEXTILES: Shaping Human Healing By Whitney MacDonald
Textile technologies may hold the key to more efficient tissue engineering techniquesWhen it comes to healing the human body, particularly tissue damage, nature can always do with a helping hand, which these days is moving into the realms of ‘tissue engineering’. The idea is to help cells grow in a certain way. This is being facilitated by the development of advanced textile fibres that create a form of customised ‘scaffolding’. The new textile technology – researched by Dr Louis Kyratzis and Dr Sharon Edwards from CSIRO Textile and Fibre Technology (CTFT) – improves the environment in which cells grow by providing a special three-dimensional framework – or, as the researchers put it, a form of ‘training wheels’ to guide cell growth. This could be applied within a laboratory culture or a living body.
For example, organ donor recipients must take immunosuppressive medicine – associated with adverse side-effects – for the rest of their lives to counter the body’s natural tendency to reject foreign tissue. Improvements in tissue engineering techniques, made possible by the textile fibre scaffolding, may help to advance the possibility of more effective treatments and tissue repair without debilitating side-effects. The key to the CTFT technology is its potential to accommodate the specialised growing environments of several different cell types, all within a single culture. Although textile techniques are currently used on some level in tissue culturing, often each culture is only optimised for the growth of a single cell type, limiting downstream applications. By using a combination of woven, non-woven, knitting and electrospinning textile techniques, the scientists hope to be able to cover a broader spectrum of cell growth requirements, making it possible to grow a heterogeneous population of cells. “Using fibre technology we are able to incorporate biological molecules, such as growth factors and other biological aids, into biodegradable fibres – for example novel polyurethanes – further facilitating cell growth management,” Dr Kyratzis says. Dr Edwards adds: “We are able to control fibre assembly to form a three-dimensional structure of known porosity, pore size distribution and fibre orientation, allowing us to customise the structure of the scaffold to suit the requirements of individual cell types.” Although the research that applies textile techniques to cell culture is still at an early stage, the CSIRO team has already formed productive collaborations with St Vincent’s Hospital, the Bionic Ear Institute, the University of Wollongong and PolyNovo Biomaterials. APPLICATION Advanced textile fibres that create a ‘scaffolding’ for growing several cell types in a single culture BENEFIT Regeneration of damaged human tissue, including nerves and organs, either in a laboratory or in a living body For further information contact: |
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The researchers say there is wide scope for the technique, ranging from regeneration of damaged nerves to damaged organs, offering hope to many patients who may otherwise have a reduced quality of life. 
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