The bioartificial thyroid: a biotecnological perspective in endocrine organ engineering for transplantation replacement

Topobiology is a recent theory developed by the Nobel Prize for Medicine, Gerald M. Edelman, leading to the belief that physiological activity of an organ is dependent upon its morphology. A theoretical study from our group has suggested that the tridimensional geometry of the stromal - vascular scaffold (SVS) may act as an epigenetic topobiological information to dictate the morphology of the parenchyma in the human thyroid gland. Knowledge of the geometry of the thyroidal SVS would thus be a key factor to drive growth trajectories of autologous, thyrocyte and endothelial precursor cells, eventually used to reconstruct ex situ a functional bionic gland. To determine the feasibility of an informatic simulation of thyroid SVS, a fractal model is under development.