we should use biological cells to build
human implants during my master thesis
my supervisor came to me with the
request he said Mauricio I received the
mail from Laura a 12 year old girl who
is losing her sight she asks us if we
can provide her micro cameras to replace
her eyes can you do that I was a little
bit perplexed of course I was working on
miniaturized CCD cameras but they were
far from being implantable replacing
body parts with electronics like in
Robocop may have seemed like a good
solution to Laura
however it’s not viable on a long-term
and especially for children there are
drawbacks fundamental drawbacks let me
show you on the example of a pacemaker
did you know that the pacemaker has to
be replaced every 10 years roughly and
then according to the european
association of cardiologists such a
replacement surgery has a success rate
of between 60 and 70 percent so what
would be the odds for a child who would
potentially need several such
replacement surgeries so why is that you
have to know that our body perceives the
implant like a foreign matter and it
tries to protect itself against it by
building shells or fibrotic tissues much
like the onion you see here so if this
onion gets too thick the electrode won’t
be able to pace the heart any longer and
will therefore fail and must be replaced
so now you can say can’t we just build
better electrodes yes we can and that’s
what we did in the project a couple of
years ago
we developed the ceramic based electrode
which was so pound compatible that it
could last much longer in the heart
compared to a metallic electrode without
doing any fibrosis so at that moment I
could have called Laura say hey Laura
how are you now I have a solution for
you how about the ceramic based micro
implant for your eyes well no because
for children there is one more point
that we have to consider children grow
implants don’t grow so for rigid
implants children basically always need
replacement surgery at least during
their growing phase so at that point I
was about to give up when one evening
riding home my bicycle I got a flat tire
rubber tires have to be replaced with
rubber tiles isn’t it nobody is going to
replace rubber tires with sausages so
why are we trying to use inert static
material to replace dynamic living
tissue I don’t say that we should make
pacemaker out of sausages but can’t we
use biological material something like
cells there are so many type of cells
all type of activate the sensors
transducer you name it there’s a
universal tool kit just in front of you
ready to be used and even more cells
don’t need any batteries they take their
energy from the surrounding cells are
living dynamic systems that will
seamlessly integrate with your body we
can even dream further and say couldn’t
we extract cells from Laura’s body
transform them back into stem cells and
the sample and implant which will be
accepted by Laura’s body 100% well not
quite because this dynamic aspect of the
cells is also their biggest weakness
healthy cells need to move they want to
move the need to migrate so you can
imagine if you use cells to build an
implant following your blueprint these
cells will just move away after some
time so how can we let the cells groove
in place and letting them move difficult
question or simple question just put
them in the cage that’s what we did in
the collaborative project between the
universities of Freiburg and Tokyo where
we showed that if you put cells into a
micro cage they grow locally and can
still move this move is you see here’s a
time-lapse movie of cells which were
placed in the pockets of this micro cage
they still can move but they will always
move back and grow in their original
location we also managed to assemble
different type of cells muscle cells
neurons skin cells like here so could we
possibly assemble a micro pacemaker
using this method probably yes
but what this pacemaker be able to pace
a human heart probably not so why is
that because we don’t have enough
critical mass it’s like throwing a
handful of sand into the sea nothing
will change so it would probably need
hundreds if not thousands of such
implants to pace a human heart or to
fill the area of a retina so how can we
do that and how can we do that in a
minimally invasive way can we maybe
achieve a critical mass by following the
example of ants and let our micro
implants self-assemble into a bigger
implant for that or micron plants would
be would need to be able to move
autonomously on their own intelligence
and it’s exactly that on what we are
working tonight today and tonight I can
show you
an example of a first step towards this
goal we developed and designed a micro
skeleton onto which we want to place
muscle cells and neuron cells the legs
and the brain of our implants this micro
skeleton has the width of the hair and
can therefore be injected into the human
body through a normal syringe so millaa
millaa minimally invasive so we started
to grow muscle cells first and activate
them that worked pretty nicely as you
see on the left side we then cultured
muscle cells and neuron cells together
at the same time I let them
differentiate at the same time what
happened is that the neurons build a
neuronal network which could interact
with the muscles so the muscle
contractions you see on the right side
are generated only by the neural network
without an external stimuli much like a
small micro Frankenstein in a culture
dish we also assemble to these muscle
cells on our micro skeleton let them
grow along the skeleton as you see the
green long strands are muscle fibers and
we also put the neurons the brain which
are shown in yellow and voila we ended
up with a micro agent which is able to
move upon electrical stimulation and
will maybe be able in future to bring
our micro implants to the right position
and assemble them I’m aware that we are
not there yet but what I showed you
today
are the first steps towards this
ambitious goal so maybe tonight I can
call Laura and tell or Laura you won’t
be you won’t need to become a Robocop
nor a Frankenstein because we found a
method with which is potentially able to
overcome the limitation of current
pacemaker or any implants please wait a
little bit longer thank you [Applause]
human implants during my master thesis
my supervisor came to me with the
request he said Mauricio I received the
mail from Laura a 12 year old girl who
is losing her sight she asks us if we
can provide her micro cameras to replace
her eyes can you do that I was a little
bit perplexed of course I was working on
miniaturized CCD cameras but they were
far from being implantable replacing
body parts with electronics like in
Robocop may have seemed like a good
solution to Laura
however it’s not viable on a long-term
and especially for children there are
drawbacks fundamental drawbacks let me
show you on the example of a pacemaker
did you know that the pacemaker has to
be replaced every 10 years roughly and
then according to the european
association of cardiologists such a
replacement surgery has a success rate
of between 60 and 70 percent so what
would be the odds for a child who would
potentially need several such
replacement surgeries so why is that you
have to know that our body perceives the
implant like a foreign matter and it
tries to protect itself against it by
building shells or fibrotic tissues much
like the onion you see here so if this
onion gets too thick the electrode won’t
be able to pace the heart any longer and
will therefore fail and must be replaced
so now you can say can’t we just build
better electrodes yes we can and that’s
what we did in the project a couple of
years ago
we developed the ceramic based electrode
which was so pound compatible that it
could last much longer in the heart
compared to a metallic electrode without
doing any fibrosis so at that moment I
could have called Laura say hey Laura
how are you now I have a solution for
you how about the ceramic based micro
implant for your eyes well no because
for children there is one more point
that we have to consider children grow
implants don’t grow so for rigid
implants children basically always need
replacement surgery at least during
their growing phase so at that point I
was about to give up when one evening
riding home my bicycle I got a flat tire
rubber tires have to be replaced with
rubber tiles isn’t it nobody is going to
replace rubber tires with sausages so
why are we trying to use inert static
material to replace dynamic living
tissue I don’t say that we should make
pacemaker out of sausages but can’t we
use biological material something like
cells there are so many type of cells
all type of activate the sensors
transducer you name it there’s a
universal tool kit just in front of you
ready to be used and even more cells
don’t need any batteries they take their
energy from the surrounding cells are
living dynamic systems that will
seamlessly integrate with your body we
can even dream further and say couldn’t
we extract cells from Laura’s body
transform them back into stem cells and
the sample and implant which will be
accepted by Laura’s body 100% well not
quite because this dynamic aspect of the
cells is also their biggest weakness
healthy cells need to move they want to
move the need to migrate so you can
imagine if you use cells to build an
implant following your blueprint these
cells will just move away after some
time so how can we let the cells groove
in place and letting them move difficult
question or simple question just put
them in the cage that’s what we did in
the collaborative project between the
universities of Freiburg and Tokyo where
we showed that if you put cells into a
micro cage they grow locally and can
still move this move is you see here’s a
time-lapse movie of cells which were
placed in the pockets of this micro cage
they still can move but they will always
move back and grow in their original
location we also managed to assemble
different type of cells muscle cells
neurons skin cells like here so could we
possibly assemble a micro pacemaker
using this method probably yes
but what this pacemaker be able to pace
a human heart probably not so why is
that because we don’t have enough
critical mass it’s like throwing a
handful of sand into the sea nothing
will change so it would probably need
hundreds if not thousands of such
implants to pace a human heart or to
fill the area of a retina so how can we
do that and how can we do that in a
minimally invasive way can we maybe
achieve a critical mass by following the
example of ants and let our micro
implants self-assemble into a bigger
implant for that or micron plants would
be would need to be able to move
autonomously on their own intelligence
and it’s exactly that on what we are
working tonight today and tonight I can
show you
an example of a first step towards this
goal we developed and designed a micro
skeleton onto which we want to place
muscle cells and neuron cells the legs
and the brain of our implants this micro
skeleton has the width of the hair and
can therefore be injected into the human
body through a normal syringe so millaa
millaa minimally invasive so we started
to grow muscle cells first and activate
them that worked pretty nicely as you
see on the left side we then cultured
muscle cells and neuron cells together
at the same time I let them
differentiate at the same time what
happened is that the neurons build a
neuronal network which could interact
with the muscles so the muscle
contractions you see on the right side
are generated only by the neural network
without an external stimuli much like a
small micro Frankenstein in a culture
dish we also assemble to these muscle
cells on our micro skeleton let them
grow along the skeleton as you see the
green long strands are muscle fibers and
we also put the neurons the brain which
are shown in yellow and voila we ended
up with a micro agent which is able to
move upon electrical stimulation and
will maybe be able in future to bring
our micro implants to the right position
and assemble them I’m aware that we are
not there yet but what I showed you
today
are the first steps towards this
ambitious goal so maybe tonight I can
call Laura and tell or Laura you won’t
be you won’t need to become a Robocop
nor a Frankenstein because we found a
method with which is potentially able to
overcome the limitation of current
pacemaker or any implants please wait a
little bit longer thank you [Applause]
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