Question: Do you make arifical people or body part?

Daniel Morse answered on 13 Mar 2017:

Well, I do, but not in the sense that it can be used in people.

If you touch the roof of your mouth with your tongue, thats called the hard palate, and that is what I make in the lab – a living 3D model of it. It is quite a complex process of getting the layers of cells to behave and mature in the way they should, but when I analyse it, it looks similar to what you find in the mouth.

I only make a small section though, about 10mm in diameter, so although when we talk about infections, its quite a big area to infect, it is a very small area (less than the size of a 5p piece) for any clinical use. It is certainly not ready for use in medicine for transplants, but, that has been done with other tissues grown in the lab elsewhere! I’d like to think that one day, we can make all of the tissues in the body and replace them as and when we need to!