Tracking Lab-Grown Tissue With Light

Wires shine green and red light into petri dish for pH sensing, with dime for size.

Someday, doctors would like to grow limbs and other body tissue for soldiers who have lost arms in battle, children who need a new heart or liver, and many other people with critical needs. Today, medical professionals can graft cells from a patient, deposit them onto a tissue scaffold, and insert the scaffold into the body to encourage the growth of bone, cartilage and other specialized tissue. But researchers are still working toward building complex organs that can be implanted into patients.

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are supporting this field of research by developing a promising new kind of light-based sensor to study tissue growth in the lab.