The Shape of Things to Come

On the Topology of Synthetic Organs

Keisuke Ishihara (JP)

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The organs in our body have a complex internal architecture consisting of tubes and loops. The heart, the brain, and the kidney all distribute information and material through the network of tubes and loops. How do organ form and function emerge from a small group of cells? How can we engineer 3d organ morphology and expand existing organ functions?

We can explore these questions through a synthetic approach called organoids, by building organ-like structures from stem cells, extracting the rules of multicellular self-organization, proposing new methods to design and engineer living tissues to advance future medical applications and organ transplantation, rethinking our notion of “life as it is” and “life as it could be.”