Sarah Heilshorn: Building replacement parts for the human body

Heart attacks, burns, strokes, disease and just plain-old aging can devastate human tissues.

But, emboldened by new understandings about the building blocks of life, engineers are applying their unique skill sets to creating replacement parts for the body.

It sounds like magic, says host and bioengineer Russ Altman, but it’s anything but. From synthetic mortars holding the biobricks of life together to new heart muscle, brain matter and skin tissue, bioengineering is on the precipice of a new age.

In this episode of The Future of Everything podcast and radio show, Altman and Sarah Heilshorn, associate professor of materials science, discuss the technical and ethical challenges of engineering new human tissues.

You can listen to the Future of Everything on iTunes, Google Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher or via Stanford Engineering Magazine.

Related | Sarah Heilshorn, associate professor of materials science and engineering and, by courtesy, of chemical engineering and of bioengineering.

Related | Russ Altman, Kenneth Fong professor and professor of bioengineering, of genetics, of medicine (general medical discipline), of biomedical data science and, by courtesy, of computer science.