Acoustic technology ‘can create cellular scaffolding for tissue engineering’

A team from the University of Washington have conducted new research that indicates a new application for acoustic technology in regenerative medicine.

The researchers made this discovery when studying boiling histotripsy – a technique that uses millisecond-long bursts of high-intensity ultrasound waves to break apart tissue – as a method of eliminating cancerous tumours.

It was found that this process left the extracellular matrix – a fibrous network that provides a scaffold for cells to grow upon – completely intact. Most other methods for decellularising tissues and organs can cause damage to the tissues and fibres, as well as taking multiple days.

The researchers believe the extracellular matrix created through this technique could be fed with stem cells to effectively re-grow an organ. Alternatively, the extracellular matrix can be implanted, allowing the body itself to self-seed the tissues.

Yak-Nam Wang, a senior engineer at the University of Washington's applied physics laboratory, said: "You won't have any immune issues, and because you have this biomimetic scaffold that's closer to the native tissue, healing would be better and the body would recognise it as normal tissue."

This comes after a recent study from Lancaster University suggested that acoustic technology could also be used to detect osteoarthritis, by interpreting data from sound waves transmitted through the knees.