46 Future Perspectives
brtryon and kmcoppin
Clinical Impact
The technologies and ideas presented in this TED talk have so many potential applications that could revolutionize patient care. Collagen is a material with many applications within patient care as we discussed earlier, but there are some concerns with the current material. Since it is typically sourced from cadaver cows and pigs, ensuring the collagen is “clean” is extremely important. The collagen must go through many many rounds of cleaning and decellularization to help ensure there is no immune response. Even with all of these steps, it is still possible to get immune responses and it makes the process of getting collagen very long and expensive. With this new technology, collagen can be produced without the use of pigs or cows. This new collagen is derived from human DNA, limiting the chances of immune responses.
Other technologies discussed in this TED talk include collagen-resin which can be used in many tissue engineering applications because of its high strength and elasticity. Tendons are a part of the body that is easily injured as they tear or break entirely, which could be fixed by an increase in the elasticity. By replacing torn tendons with an artificial one made of collagen-resilin, tendon function can be restored with the same or even better mechanical properties than before, leading to less injuries long term.
Scientific Impact
Not only is this technology interesting for the clinical applications and impact, but has the potential for many other scientific advancements in the field of polymeric biomaterials. The whole idea of this TED talk is that nature likely already has solutions for problems we are trying to solve. Some material based solutions found in nature are not easy to access, such as the resilin found in fleas. But if the DNA can be extracted and produced commercially through plants, we could have access to tons more materials with unique properties with a variety of applications. This idea could be applied and explored for many different materials, and would involve scientists, biologists, chemists, agricultural scientists, materials scientists, doctors, and so many more. This process needs people to extract DNA, implant the DNA in plants, grow the plants, extract the desired material, and transform the material into its final form. The new materials produced from this process could be for biomedical applications, but could also potentially be used to improve a variety of other fields including medicine, aerospace, textiles, automotive, and so many more.
