• Question: Using stem cells to grow organs/body parts would it be possible to grow an entire human without cloning or reproduction? If so, how would you be able to control what the cells grow into?

    Asked by loki to Anzy, Aoife, Dave, Matt, Tomasz on 13 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: David Christensen

      David Christensen answered on 13 Nov 2013:

      That’s a big tough question, loki (great name by the way).

      I guess in theory you could make a whole person from growing the individual body parts from stem cells, although it would be hugely difficult and complicated. We can’t go many of the organs yet and then growing all of the things that connect the organs together and hold everything up and fill in the gaps – that would be really tricky to get right, I think.

      But, you say without cloning or reproduction. This gets really complicated now. Cloning is making something that is genetically identical to another organism, like with Dolly the sheep. So, if we used an embryonic stem cell that was taken from an embryo, which is not going to survive, then we will make a genetically unique human. So, I guess, yes it could be done without cloning. And actually I don’t think cloning would make it easier.

      Also you say without reproduction. It depends what you mean by reproduction. Reproduction is the whole process that creates us starting from an egg being fertilised by a sperm and continuing through pregnancy to birth. If we grow the body parts from stem cells, then we cannot do this without first creating an embryo by fertilising an egg with a sperm, so we’ve already failed on that. But if we’re growing the rest of the body parts in the lab, then we can possibly skip the pregnancy and birth.

      Finally I’m on to your last question about how to control what the cells grow into. I can’t really answer this – you’ve asked the big question that just about everyone working with stem cells wants to know. We know roughly how to do it – we give different chemicals to the cells which seem to tell them to become different things. Also by growing on something else we can roughly control the shape they grow into. But we can’t do any of this very well and until we know how to do this we can’t really treat diseases using stem cells and certainly can’t make people.

    • Photo: Matthew Tomlinson

      Matthew Tomlinson answered on 13 Nov 2013:

      Hi loki

      I don’t think this is something that will be possible, I also don’t think it’s something we need to do, looking at the global population we’re pretty good at making new humans! At the moment it’s very difficult to make new organs in the lab, we can produce very accurate scaffolds which look like the organ we want to reproduce and we can even use 3D printing to put the cells where we want them to be. We can also give the right chemicals and surfaces for them to hold onto but the organs still aren’t exactly like the real thing. The main reasons for this a blood vessels and nerve cells, blood vessels are really important because without them your tissue will die as it will not get enough nutrients, and without nerve cells the organ cannot correctly respond to things like movement.

      Once you get towards trying to grow a whole new human, then the difficulties just become too great. I think our focus at the moment is making people’s lives better, not making new people. Plus robots would be a way cooler solution!

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