Some Harvard & MIT scientists have developed a 3-D material that can act as a scaffold for human tissues. This material will allow tissues to grow and be able to monitor and report on the tissue’s health. Scientists are hoping it will help in development of new prosthetic devices. From PopSci:

[S]cientists led by MIT professor Robert Langer and Harvard chemistry professor Charles Lieber set out to build a 3-D scaffold that more closely resembles real tissue. The team wanted to build sensors that would let them monitor how the tissue responds to drugs in real time.

The scaffold is made from epoxy embedded with silicon nanowires, which can carry electrical signals to and from the cells. The mesh was folded or rolled into a structure resembling either tissue or vasculature. The nanowires can detect voltages lower than one-thousandth of a watt, according to MIT News — that’s the level of electricity that might be seen in a cell. The mesh was porous enough for the team to seed it with cells and coax them to grow. The system thereby supports cell growth while simultaneously monitoring it.

In their study, the authors used the scaffold to grow cardiac, neural and muscle tissue. They monitored heart tissue cell’s response to a stimulant called noradrenalin, which increases heart rate. Langer, who has published several groundbreaking studies on artificial tissue, nanowires and heart cells, said this could be a step toward engineered muscle: “It brings us one step closer to someday creating a tissue-engineered heart, and it shows how novel nanomaterials can play a role in this field,” he said.