THE BIGGEST BREAKTHROUGHS OF THE CENTURY

We're a quarter of the way into the new century. To mark this milestone, we asked the UK's top minds to highlight some of the game-changing scientific breakthroughs shaping our world since the year 2000

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TISSUE ENGINEERING

Sir Mark Miodownik

Professor of Materials & Society, UCL Author of It's a Gas: The Magnificent and Elusive Elements that Expand Our World

Going to the dentist and having a synthetic resin filling is fine, but it's not as good as a real tooth.

But what if we could grow real teeth in the lab from a person's own stem cells and implant them back into their mouth? This sounds like science fiction, but tissue engineering is a breakthrough technology that's already being used to grow human tissue, through *scaffold technology'. Scaffolds are porous materials that support stem cells as they divide and grow into new tissues. Artificial ears, trachea (windpipes) and bone have been grown this way and successfully implanted into human patients. Because the implanted tissues are grown from a patient's own cells, there are no problems with immune rejection.

Artificial kidneys, knee cartilage and even hearts are also being grown this way, although these are still confined to lab experiments. No one can yet put a limit on this new technology, but the successful regrowing of teeth is on the horizon.

...BUT ALSO SELF-REPAIRING MATERIALS

A modern smartphone contains half the elements in the periodic table and yet only has a lifespan of two to three years, on average. To save the massive amounts of energy we're wasting on continually producing (and even recycling) phones and everything else that fills our lives, we need to find a new way of making products that last longer..