Lab-Grown Bones on Display

摘要

New-media artist amy karle has always been enthralled by science. She grew up around her mother's medical research lab and studied genetic engineering in college. Now Karle, who previously performed an art piece where a computer mapped her biofeedback as she meditated, is growing a skeletal human hand. In the first step of the creative process, Karle and a team of experts scanned the bones of a female hand as the basis for a digital model. Then they gave the model pores and other microstructures that make it mimic bone. Karle 3-D-printed this scaffolding out of a biodegradable, nontoxic hydrogel. Finally, the team seeded the hydrogel with human stem cells and placed it in a bioreactor-a container to keep the project alive. Over the next two years, Karle wants the cells to grow over the frame and develop into bone.