Artificial Support and Replacement of Human Organs - Biomimetics: Biologically Inspired Technologies - page 467

to sustain. Answers to these problems will hopefully be addressed in the future federal funding
mechanism as outlined in the initiative by NIH on nanotechnology.
One of the questions that is frequently debated is whether future organ replacement technology
will involve miniaturizing the current systems or building newer organ replacement systems
from scratch. As outlined above, current organ replacement systems have several disadvantages
which will be difficult to overcome even if they are miniaturized. Miniaturization will certainly
play an important role in devising therapeutic interventions such as drug delivery. Devising
organ replacement systems from scratch will help address the current problems of biocompati-
bility and better mimic the organ function at cellular level. This will involve creating novel
anatomical models of scaffoldings which are biocompatible and bioactive to allow cell growth
and differentiation so that complex organs can be developed. Such new organ systems will need
to produce energy from oxygen, glucose, and other substances freely available in the blood and be
self-sufficient.
How far we are from the reality of buying off-the-shelf artificial organs? May be in next 10
years? As the pace of developments in the fields of nanotechnology, tissue engineering, and others
is accelerating, the reality of having a self-sustaining artificial organ replacement system is a
possible reality in the upcoming years.
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