Regenerative medicine is a promising field that could revolutionize treatment by repairing damaged tissues and organs. Stem cells are being researched in many parts of the world and may provide a new treatment for a number of degenerative conditions, including those that lead to disability and even death.
In Japan, the cultivation of stem cells has already been undertaken by special robotic machines that copy the skills of experienced researchers and improve them. At the Riken Institute, in particular, researchers have been able to replicate the procedure for creating retinal cells. The cells grown in the machine have the same qualities as cells cultured manually. But the automated process is more advanced and faster.
The scientists suggest that the method could easily be extended to all cells grown in the lab, as lessons learned by one robot could be copied on other robots.
At Osaka University, a research team of scientists is developing an industrial system with AI that can combine all the basic processes required for regenerative medicine, including the application of induced pluripotent stem cells. The lab has achieved many successes. For example, scientists have recently succeeded in developing an AI-assisted acceleration sensor that enhances the stability of the delicate process of culturing cells. Normally, cells are cultured in a volume of 1 liter or even less, but thanks to a neural network, this amount can be increased by a factor of 5.
Researchers at Nagoya University are collaborating with a reputable company called NIKON to develop an image-analysis system that could assess the quality of stem cells for further drug and therapeutic applications. The cell quality prediction system learns essentially the same way as a human, continuously optimizing its analysis methods as it performs more cell evaluations.
Thanks to improvements in artificial intelligence, the field of regenerative medicine are constantly evolving. And machine methods, unlike their manual counterparts, are more economically feasible and provide increased productivity. Perhaps it is thanks to artificial intelligence that regenerative medicine will be more accessible to people in need. AI gives researchers the opportunity to develop new regenerative medicines, to engage in consistent, financially viable, and safe cultivation of transplantable cells on a significant scale.
