Futuristic Organs

Woody Allen's 1973 sci-fi comedy The Sleeper is set in a futuristic police-state whose leaders set about resurrecting their dead dictator from his only remaining body-part – his nose. Two hundred years from now, when the plot is set, this could turn into science-fact thanks to stem cell technology, now taking its baby-steps. To date, bioengineers have succeeded in re-growing tissues from kidneys, lungs, arteries, bone, skin, and now, contracting heart muscle fibres (shown). To do this they deposited stem cells on a chip lined with a protein mimicking the natural heart environment, prompting the cells to form heart tissue. And to demonstrate the usefulness of this technique for cheap and risk-free trialling of future gene therapies, they introduced a faulty gene into the cells causing Barth syndrome – a condition that weakens heart contractions – which they 'cured' by re-introducing a healthy gene that restored the contractions to full strength.

Written by Tristan Farrow

Tristan Farrow

Writer

British Science Association Media Fellow. He holds a degree in quantum physics from the University of Cambridge and a Research Fellowship in quantum effects in biology.

• Image by Kevin Kit Parker and colleagues
• Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University
• Copyright held by Nature Publishing Group
• Research published in Nature Medicine, May 2014