question about skin cells elaboration

[rieiro]

Why the elaboration of skin cells (in laboratories) is easier than liver and kidney cells?

my proffesor said that nowadays it's impossible make liver and kidney cells, buy in the case of be posible, why?

sorry for my english.

[blcr11]

You don’t really “make” cells in the laboratory, not even skin cells, although you can, under some circumstances, make what it called artificial skin by growing primary fibroblast explants on special kinds of biopolymers in vitro. The “skin” is sometimes used as transplant material for severely burned patients. People are trying, but you can’t do that sort of thing (yet) with an organ like the liver or kidney. Skin cells (well, specifically fibroblasts) are a reasonably homogeneous population of cells compared to “liver” or “kidney” cells. Part of the normal function of fibroblasts is to cover damaged tissue, so, because they are primed to divide if given the right signals, fibroblasts are more inclined to undergo cell division in vitro without the use of a lot of exotic additives to the culture media. In contrast, primary explants of liver or kidney cells sometimes require the use of feeder cells in order even to survive, never mind to grow. Even so, after some time in artificial growth media, oftentimes you will find that your “liver” or “kidney” cells will consist mainly of fibroblastoid cells, not the liver- or kidney-specific cells you may have wanted. Maybe when we’ve learned to manipulate stem cells better it will be possible to really do this type of organ growth, but right now we can’t keep the differentiated cells alive long in culture unless they’ve been transformed, but then they aren’t “normal” cells any more.