Bob might be your next-door neighbor. He’s an affable, 60-something retired engineer who took a buyout before the Internet bubble burst. He golfs, enjoys his grandchildren, and likes to travel with his wife of 35 years. The only problem is that he’s getting old&emdash;and he knows it. He’s bald on top, his skin is starting to sag in places, his eyesight isn’t what it used to be, and he sometimes can’t hear what his dinner companions are saying. Even worse, the diabetes that he was diagnosed with in his 40s is getting more difficult to control: his blood sugar seems like it is up one minute, down the next. And it seems as though all his friends have had at least one heart attack.
Bob is worried about getting old.
As an engineer, Bob knows that the body is just one big system that runs by chemical gradients and electrical impulses. So why is it so difficult to come up with replacement parts when bodies like his start to break down?
Luckily for Bob&emdash;and especially for those of us who are younger and can wait a few more years&emdash;engineers and doctors, mostly in the United States, have stepped up their search for ways to build replacement parts.
The current effort is focused on so-called biohybrid or bioartificial organs, which combine living cells with materials such as silicon and polymers. The hybrid organs get their structure from the inorganic material while relying on living tissue, grown from cadavers, animals, or, one day, from the patient’s own body, to do the complex tasks they do best, such as processing biochemicals and filtering blood. Although biohybrids are being tested outside the body and are at least five years away from reaching the market, ultimately they are being designed as implants&emdash;seamless replacement parts.
