Good morning everybody.
早安各位
I work with really amazing, little, itty-bitty creatures called cells. And let me tell you what it's like to grow these cells in the lab. I work in a lab where we take cells out of their native environment. We plate them into dishes that we sometimes call petri dishes. And we feed them -- sterilely of course -- with what we call cell culture media -- which is like their food -- and we grow them in incubators.
我的工作是關於非常驚人的 微小生物,它們叫做細胞 讓我告訴你們如何 在實驗室裡培養這些細胞 在實驗室中,我們將細胞從它們的原生環境取出 我們將它們放置到碟子中 有時我們稱這些碟子為培養皿 我們當然是用無菌的方式餵食這些細胞 用的是稱為細胞培養基的東西,這就如同它們的食物 然後我們在培養機中培養它們
Why do I do this? We observe the cells in a plate, and they're just on the surface. But what we're really trying to do in my lab is to engineer tissues out of them. What does that even mean? Well it means growing an actual heart, let's say, or grow a piece of bone that can be put into the body. Not only that, but they can also be used for disease models. And for this purpose, traditional cell culture techniques just really aren't enough. The cells are kind of homesick; the dish doesn't feel like their home. And so we need to do better at copying their natural environment to get them to thrive. We call this the biomimetic paradigm -- copying nature in the lab.
為什麼我要這麼做? 我們觀察培養皿中的細胞 它們都分佈在培養基的表面 但我們在實驗室裡想做的是 利用它們做出組織 而這到底是什麼意思呢? 意思是培養一顆真的心臟 又例如 培養一塊骨頭 能放到身體裡面的骨頭 不但如此,它們也能用於疾病模型 但如果要這麼做,傳統的細胞培養技術 就略顯不足了 這些細胞有點適應不良 培養皿一點都不像它們生長的地方 因此我們需要在複製它們的自然環境方面加強 才能使它們成長茁壯 我們稱這個技術為「仿生式樣」 也就是在實驗室中複製自然環境
Let's take the example of the heart, the topic of a lot of my research. What makes the heart unique? Well, the heart beats, rhythmically, tirelessly, faithfully. We copy this in the lab by outfitting cell culture systems with electrodes. These electrodes act like mini pacemakers to get the cells to contract in the lab. What else do we know about the heart? Well, heart cells are pretty greedy. Nature feeds the heart cells in your body with a very, very dense blood supply. In the lab, we micro-pattern channels in the biomaterials on which we grow the cells, and this allows us to flow the cell culture media, the cells' food, through the scaffolds where we're growing the cells -- a lot like what you might expect from a capillary bed in the heart.
我們拿心臟來當例子好了 這是我研究很多的主題 心臟獨特之處在那裡? 心臟會跳動 很規律、很不倦地、忠誠地跳動 我們在實驗室裡複製心跳 方法是在細胞培養系統加入電極 這些電極功能就像迷你心律調整器 能夠讓細胞在實驗室裡收縮 此外,我們對心臟還知道些什麼? 心臟細胞是非常耗能的 大自然必須用很充沛的血液量 來維持體內的心臟細胞的運作 在實驗室裡,我們用生物材料 製作微小的管道 然後我們在那上面培養細胞 這樣我們才能將細胞培養基,也就是細胞的食物 注入我們培養細胞的支架 很像我們印象中的 心臟微血管床
So this brings me to lesson number one: life can do a lot with very little. Let's take the example of electrical stimulation. Let's see how powerful just one of these essentials can be. On the left, we see a tiny piece of beating heart tissue that I engineered from rat cells in the lab. It's about the size of a mini marshmallow. And after one week, it's beating. You can see it in the upper left-hand corner. But don't worry if you can't see it so well. It's amazing that these cells beat at all. But what's really amazing is that the cells, when we electrically stimulate them, like with a pacemaker, that they beat so much more.
這樣我們就可以開始進入主題了: 生命即使在匱乏的環境中也能成就非凡 我們用電刺激來舉個例子好了 我們來看看這個要素本身的功能有多強大 在左邊,我們可以看見一小塊在跳動的心臟組織 這是我在實驗室中從老鼠細胞做出來的 它跟迷你棉花糖一樣大 一個禮拜後,它開始跳動了 你可以在左上角的圖中看到 如果你看不清楚也不用擔心(因為跳動非常細微) 這些細胞光是會跳動就很令人驚奇了 但是真正令人驚訝的是 當我們用電刺激這些細胞時 就像用一個心律調整器一樣 這些細胞跳得更有生命力了
But that brings me to lesson number two: cells do all the work. In a sense, tissue engineers have a bit of an identity crisis here, because structural engineers build bridges and big things, computer engineers, computers, but what we are doing is actually building enabling technologies for the cells themselves. What does this mean for us? Let's do something really simple. Let's remind ourselves that cells are not an abstract concept. Let's remember that our cells sustain our lives in a very real way. "We are what we eat," could easily be described as, "We are what our cells eat." And in the case of the flora in our gut, these cells may not even be human. But it's also worth noting that cells also mediate our experience of life. Behind every sound, sight, touch, taste and smell is a corresponding set of cells that receive this information and interpret it for us. It begs the question: shall we expand our sense of environmental stewardship to include the ecosystem of our own bodies?
再來我要講第二課了: 所有的工作交給細胞就好了 就某方面來說,組織工程師有一點身份認同的危機 因為結構工程師 建造橋樑及巨大的物體 電腦工程師當然就是電腦了 但我們所從事的工作 其實是建造一個科技來啟動細胞本身 這對我們來說代表著什麼呢? 我們來做一件簡單的事 我們來提醒自己 細胞並不是一個抽象的概念 我們要記得,細胞維持著我們的生命 用的是非常真實的方式 「我們吃什麼就像什麼」可以簡單得說成 「細胞吃什麼,我們就像什麼」 例如我們腸道內的菌群 這些細胞甚至不是人體的 還值得注意的是 細胞還調節著我們對人生的體驗 在聽覺、視覺、觸覺、味覺、嗅覺的背後 各有一組對應的細胞 來接受訊息 並為我們詮釋 而這也把我們帶到了這個問題: 我們是否該擴展對環境管理的概念 並納入我們自身的生態環境呢?
I invite you to talk about this with me further, and in the meantime, I wish you luck. May none of your non-cancer cells become endangered species.
我歡迎你們和我更進一步的探討這個話題 而在那之前,我要祝大家好運 希望大家的非癌細胞都不會 成為瀕臨絕種的生物
Thank you.
謝謝大家
(Applause)
(掌聲)