Why can cars be kept operational decades longer than they were originally designed to last? Because repair shops can replace worn out and broken parts. We humans can't replace our worn out parts because we have no way to make replacements for most of our parts. With that thought in mind check out how researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have grown replacement livers by using the vasculature and other structure of a freshly dead liver to grow a new liver.
Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have taken the first steps toward building functional, transplantable livers. In a study in rats, published online today by Nature Medicine, the researchers took donor livers, gently stripped them of their cells while leaving other material intact, and then used the remaining structure as a scaffold on which to grow healthy liver cells. The result was a nearly complete organ that was transplanted into the rats and remained functional for up to eight hours.
The strip away the liver cells to retain the scaffolding, add new liver cells and, and then grow a new liver in a nutrient bath.
One obvious problem with this approach is that it requires an existing organ to use as a starting point. Given that someone with a failing organ still typically needs the remaining functionality of their organ they can't use their own organ's blood vessels as a scaffolding to grow a replacement organ in a culture. The development of better artificial organs could enable the removal of more types of diseased organs without immediate death. Then a patient could be kept alive (albeit connected to machines) while a new replacement part is grown.
Of course, lots of people die every day who leave behind livers. If their liver cells could be removed and a person with a sick liver could donate their own cells to grow a new liver then the immune rejection problem would be much smaller even though the scaffolding used to grow the liver would be from a different person than the one who gets the new liver.
Click thru and read all the details. This approach still has some unsolved problems. But the scientists working on it are optimistic they can solve all these problems within 10 years. Then humans will become more like cars: able to be kept on the road with replacement parts.
| Share | | Randall Parker, 2010 July 14 11:26 PM Biotech Tissue Engineering |
You'll love this:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/anthony_atala_growing_organs_engineering_tissue.html
If you don't have cells you don't have rejection problems from cells.
Maybe pig livers would do. That would be worth more than liverwurst.
Iowa has lots of pigs too. I guess it's cheaper to ship pigs than corn. Or maybe the people who eat pigs don't want live ones nearby. They think their pork chops come from Wal-Mart.
Actually this is not ground breaking as they have done this w animal hearts at the University of Minnesota. The extracellular matrix does not matter where it is from. You could theoretically get a decellularized liver or any other organ and introduce progenitor cells to make a new, compatible organ. In the words of Instapundit-----FASTER Please.
Underachiever,
I've covered Anthony Atala's tissue engineering research in past posts. I'm curious to know where he gets his funding for such a large team.
Pass the onions!