• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Wednesday, July 23, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Bioengineering

Biorubber opens doors for tissue engineering

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
March 1, 2014
in Bioengineering
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
ADVERTISEMENT
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

Scientists from around the world have been contacting an MIT laboratory for samples of “biorubber,” a new material with myriad applications including engineered lungs, heart valves and other elastic tissues.

Biodegradable polymers that are safe to use in the human body are already used in drug delivery, tissue engineering and more. Whether impregnated with medicine or serving as a scaffold for growing cells, such polymers are eventually absorbed by the body when their work is done.

Biorubber

Until now, however, none of these polymers has had the defining property of a rubber band: the ability to stretch and then snap back to its original shape. The dominant material in today’s market is hard and brittle.

“If you think about it, though, many of the organs in the body are elastic,” said Robert Langer, the Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering. For example, the tiny air sacs in lungs expand more than seven times when you inhale. “So if researchers engineer replacements for these organs some day, they certainly want them to mimic the original tissues,” he said.

Hence the query Langer received eight years ago from Dr. Joseph P. Vacanti, head of surgical transplantation at Massachusetts General Hospital. Vacanti, who has collaborated with Langer for years, asked the MIT engineer if he could make an elastic polymer for use in tissue engineering.

Biorubber, announced in the June issue of Nature Biotechnology, is the result. Langer’s coauthors are Yadong Wang, a research associate in chemical engineering; Guillermo A. Ameer, a chemical engineering postdoctoral associate now at Northwestern University; and Barbara J. Sheppard, a comparative pathologist in the Division of Comparative Medicine (now at the Wyeth Genetics Institute).

“This work is extremely important and represents the culmination of several years of effort specifically aimed at new materials that could have applications in the field of tissue engineering,” Vacanti said. “Because of the physical characteristics of the material, it could act as scaffolding to help in the design of heart tissue, blood vessels, cartilage, bone and many other structures of the human body, including whole organs for transplantation. We are now working with Drs. Wang and Langer in exploring its use in these areas of tissue engineering.”

In addition to being strong, biocompatible and inexpensive (because the researchers can make it in large quantities of some 400 grams per batch), biorubber also has a number of other advantages. For example, due to its general chemical composition, it can be easily tailored to have a variety of different properties, such as a fast or slow degradation rate, for different applications. Biorubber’s brittle counterparts are much more difficult to modify.

Although the new material has yet to be approved for use in humans by the Food and Drug Administration, a process that could take years, Wang is optimistic about its success. That’s because its two principal building blocks are well known to be nontoxic. One of these, glycerol, is common in all of our cells, and the other received FDA approval in 1996 for use in another polymer developed by Langer for drug delivery.

Even before publication of the biorubber “birth announcement” in Nature Biotechnology, several scientists learned of the new material from visits to Langer’s lab. Wang has sent samples to researchers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Japan and New Zealand. They in turn have been exploring biorubber’s applications in engineering blood vessels, heart valves, liver and cartilage.

“It’s amazing to see how far this project has come,” Wang concluded.

The work was sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by MIT News Office, Elizabeth A. Thomson.

Share14Tweet9Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

blank

Why is the first Turkish bioengineering promotion website, Biyomuhendislik.com, so important?

February 4, 2023
blank

Robo-fish

September 19, 2016

Mice born from ‘tricked’ eggs

September 17, 2016

UCLA researchers use stem cells to grow 3-D lung-in-a-dish

September 16, 2016
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • Blind to the Burn

    Overlooked Dangers: Debunking Common Myths About Skin Cancer Risk in the U.S.

    58 shares
    Share 23 Tweet 15
  • New Organic Photoredox Catalysis System Boosts Efficiency, Drawing Inspiration from Photosynthesis

    54 shares
    Share 22 Tweet 14
  • IIT Researchers Unveil Flying Humanoid Robot: A Breakthrough in Robotics

    53 shares
    Share 21 Tweet 13
  • AI Achieves Breakthrough in Drug Discovery by Tackling the True Complexity of Aging

    70 shares
    Share 28 Tweet 18

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Additive Manufacturing of Monolithic Gyroidal Solid Oxide Cells

Machine Learning Uncovers Sorghum’s Complex Mold Resistance

Pathology Multiplexing Revolutionizes Disease Mapping

  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.