Glowing and Growing

A fibre that glows in the dark is literally shedding light on techniques for growing tissue in the laboratory to repair to body parts. The fluorescent polymer TQ1, originally developed for use in solar cells, is spun into fibre mats that can be shaped into a support structure, or scaffold, for biological cells to grow on. Because the fibres glow, scientists can look inside the tissue with microscopes, even after implantation, to check it has formed properly and is integrating with normal tissue. Pictured are TQ1 fibres (red) supporting a culture of chicken cardiomyocytes – heart muscle cells (stained green) – in a laboratory experiment. One of the major goals of regenerative medicine is to grow human tissue from a patient’s own cells to repair or replace organs, so that the complication of rejection is avoided.

Written by Mick Warwicker

Mick Warwicker

Writer

A freelance communications consultant and writer, Mick specialises in science and education. A science graduate and award-winning print and broadcast journalist, he was Head of Communications at Newcastle University from 2000–2011.

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• Image from work by Abeni Wickham and colleagues
• University of Linköping, Sweden
• Copyright Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. Reproduced with permission.
• Published in Advanced Functional Materials, July 2015