Experts have created a new type of artificial bone marrow which can be used to test new drugs and provide blood for transfusions.
Professor Nicholas Kotov and colleagues at the University of Michigan, USA, believe that their work could also lead to closer study of immune system disorders.
The substance they created grows on a 3D scaffold that mimics the tissues supporting bone marrow in the body. It is not intended for implanting in the body, like most 3D biomedical scaffolds, but to remain in the test tube.
Professor Kotov said: "This is the first successful artificial bone marrow. It has two of the essential functions of bone marrow. It can replicate blood stem cells and produce B cells. The latter are the key immune cells producing antibodies that are important to fighting many diseases."
This means it could be used to test how new drugs would affect bone marrow function at different doses – highlighting dangerous side-effects in advance of human trials.
Professor Kotov explained that the 3D scaffold is crucial. It has a large number of precisely-sized pores that nutrients can easily pass through, mimicking human bone marrow. Details are published online in the journal Biomaterials.
"The geometrical perfection of the polymer moulded by spheres is very essential for reproducibility of the drug tests and evaluation of potential drug candidates," he said. "The scaffold for this work had to be designed from scratch closely mimicking real bone marrow because there are no suitable commercial products.
"In the new design, stem cells that are essential for immunity and blood production are able to grow, divide and differentiate."
Nichols, J. E. et al. In vitro analog of human bone marrow from 3D scaffolds with biomimetic inverted colloidal crystal geometry. Biomaterials, Vol. 30, February 2009, pp. 1071-79.
Leave a Reply