The inter-dependence of basic and applied biomedical sciences: Lessons from kidney development and tissue-engineering

The sciences are often divided into the ‘basic’ and the ‘applied’. The usual view is that applied sciences depend on basic sciences for essential knowledge, but that the converse is not the case: this might explain why, at least in the author’s country, applied scientists seem often to be viewed as ‘below’, in some social sense, their basic-science colleagues. As a hybrid scientist/technologist who has worked for many years in both the basic science side of developmental biology (embryology) and its applied side (tissue engineering), I would argue that each depends very much on the other. This short article will illustrate the point with the story of kidney development–how scientists came to understand how natural kidneys develop and how tissue engineers have learned to engineer realistic kidney organoids in culture.