Technology has gone further to help regenerate human tissue that has to be regenerated by trauma. Researchers at the University of Oxford (UK) have designed a human-like robotic system to grow human tendon tissue, which connects muscle to bone.
As published in the national newspaper ABC, the findings, which were presented in Nature Communications Engineering, could improve the production and quality of tissue grafts for future use in patients and support the development of advanced robotic systems.
Human tendon grafts require external force to stimulate growth and increase functionality. For more than 20 years, robotics has facilitated the growth of engineered tissue in bioreactors using stretching devices, but researchers are still unable to produce fully functional tissue grafts that can be used clinically.
For this reason, humanoid robots, which mimic human movement and strength more realistically, are being investigated to improve the quality of tissue grafts, as stretch bioreactors are not currently able to mimic plant growth conditions well, real life or mechanical stress.
The authors found that after 14 days, the level of force exerted by the robot’s movement affected the growth of human cells and their gene expression compared to static culture.
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