Molly Stevens
The Life Scientific
BBC
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 November 2011
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jim al-Khalili talks to a scientist who grows human bones in a test tube, Molly Stevens.
Molly Stevens does geeky hard core science but her main aim is to help people. Twenty years ago, nobody thought it was possible to make human body parts in the laboratory, but today scientists are trying to create almost every bit of the body. Professor Molly Stevens grows bones. Towards the end of her PHD, a chance encounter with the founding father of tissue engineering and an image of a little boy with chronic liver failure, convinced her that this was what she wanted to do. Ten years on, she runs a highly successful lab at Imperial College London and has been photographed by Vogue.
Producer: Anna Buckley.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Once you've wrapped up this podcast, how about trying a very British cult? |
| 0:06.0 | What happens if the person you trust with your future isn't what you think they are? |
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| 0:23.0 | Discover more of our biggest podcast from 2003. |
| 0:27.0 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:30.0 | Thank you for downloading The Life Scientific from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:35.0 | In 1995 an extraordinary and rather freaky image captured the attention of the global media, |
| 0:41.0 | a mouse with the human ear growing on its back. of the such a significant medical advance that you really ought to see it. |
| 0:54.4 | What Dr Viscat in his team has succeeded in doing is growing living human tissue in the shape |
| 0:59.8 | of a human ear on the back of a mouse. This woke the world up to what the pioneers of a new |
| 1:05.4 | brand of science had achieved. The growing of body parts had moved from science fiction |
| 1:11.5 | into science fact. There was huge excitement mainly in the US that |
| 1:15.2 | before long tissue engineers will be able to create almost anything they |
| 1:19.8 | wanted, not just ears but lungs, limbs or livers. |
| 1:24.0 | Some scientists imagined lab-grown hearts beating in jars |
| 1:28.0 | lined up in hospital, ready to replace damaged or diseased organs |
| 1:32.0 | and save the lives of accident victims. |
| 1:35.0 | Well, in the year 2000, Professor Molly Stevens, who was then just a PhD student, |
| 1:40.0 | heard the founding father of tissue engineering, Robert Lange, give a lecture at a conference |
| 1:46.0 | and decided there and then that that's what she wanted to do. |
| 1:50.4 | She now runs a highly successful lab at Imperial College London. |
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