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Tissue engineers from the Universities of Liverpool and Bristol have invented a novel tissue “scaffold” technology that might one day enable the growth large organs in the laboratory.

According to data generated by these experiments, it is possible to combine cells with a special scaffold to produce living tissues in the laboratory. Hopefully, such organs can then be implanted into patients who need to have a diseased body part replaced. To this point, growing large organs in the laboratory has been impossible because growing larger structures in the laboratory limits the delivery of oxygen supply to the cells in the center of the organ. Therefore, growing tissues in the laboratory has been restricted to small structures that are readily served by the diffusion of oxygen.

In the experiments conducted by the University of Liverpool and Bristol teams, cartilage tissue engineering was employed as a model system for testing strategies for…