A US start-up has announced research into ‘body-like structures’ for growing organs
R3 Bio, an American start-up based in Richmond, California, has publicly revealed some of its work and announced that it has secured funding for research into artificial biological structures. The company states that this represents an alternative to animal testing and a way to study the effects of drugs not only on individual cells or organs, but on entire organ systems.
The company’s investors include Tim Draper, the Immortal Dragons fund from Singapore, and LongGame Ventures. According to MIT Technology Review, some investors and supporters of the technology also view it as a potential path to organ cultivation and life extension.
The discussion centred on the idea of creating biological structures without a fully functioning brain. Proponents of this approach argue that, in the absence of consciousness and the ability to feel pain, these systems could be used as a more ethical source of organs or as a model for medical research.
The company’s founder, John Schloendorn, presented investors with a broader concept that included so-called ‘full body replacement’ and the use of ‘unconscious clones’ as spare bodies. R3 Bio denied this and stated that claims regarding the intention to create human clones or people with brain damage are categorically untrue.
According to the publication, there is no evidence of the creation of human clones or even animals larger than rodents. At the same time, the article mentions documents, presentations and roadmaps describing ideas for ‘body replacement cloning’, research on mice and possible future experiments on primates.
Another start-up, Kind Biotechnology, is mentioned separately; it is working on creating animal ‘organ bags’ with a minimal nervous system. The company’s patent applications refer to animals that lack the ability to feel, think or perceive their environment. The company describes this as a method for creating organs for experimental transplantation.
Experts interviewed by MIT Technology Review expressed serious reservations. Researcher José Cibelli stated that such an idea sounds crazy and raises questions about the limits of what is permissible in science. Neuroscientist Björn Merker emphasised that even in the absence of most of the brain, the question of consciousness cannot be considered definitively resolved.
The article also notes that a full body or head transplant remains a hypothetical and unproven procedure. To date, there is no proven method for reconnecting a severed spinal cord, and cloning technologies themselves remain complex, expensive and risky.
Thus, the R3 Bio projects and related ideas remain, for the time being, at the stage of early research, technical assumptions and debate. At the same time, the very emergence of such developments has already sparked widespread controversy regarding the boundaries of biotechnology, transplantology and ethics.
