Slashdot Mirror
3D Human Cells Grown
SR_melb writes writes to tell us that Melbourn researchers have, for the first time, managed to grow three dimensional human cells. This bypasses previous achievements of only being able to create two-dimensional constructions like skin. From the article: "Professor Wayne Morrison, from Melbourne's Bernard O'Brien Institute of Microsurgery has led the breakthrough. He says it's a world first and predicts the discovery will ultimately lead to the creation of human organs, including parts of the heart, by using the patients' own stem cells. Such a scenario, says Professor Morrison, would reduce the problem of immune rejection which is often associated with organ transplants."
Intern: Professor Morrison, we've had over 800,000 similar requests for a replacement penis and hand!
Morrison: Ahhh, yes. News of our discovery must have made it to Slashdot!
Trolling is a art,
Funny. I didn't realize there were any 2D human cells. Maybe that's how Flat Stanley was able to slide under the door.
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
FTA: Now, currently we have been able to make breast tissue...
Great, I'll take two please.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
The only catch is that you have to wear wacky-looking glasses to see them in 3D.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
what the editor/ writer meant was "Human Cells Grown in a 3D Matrix"
;-)
that would have conveyed the substance of the story better, without idiots being confused and dorks laughing at the idiocy of the title, of which there is certainly to be a deluge of such comments
the title "4D Human Cells Grown" or "2D Human Cells Grown"... now that would have been interesting, as the laws of physics as we know them would have been breached, nevermind the laws of biology
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This article http://www.startribune.com/535/story/45512.html from a year ago would make me believe the researchers in Australia were not the first to accomplish this. Either that or they've taken a long time to tell anyone about it. The Star Tribune article is actually more interesting in that it gives more specifics on how the cells were actually grown.
Melbourn researchers have, for the first time, managed to grow three dimensional human cells.
I've been doing that for years.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Article does not have any indication to a peer-reviewed publications. My attempts to Pubmed it did not succeed.
No comments until the reference will pop up.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Britain's 19th Century industry was so obsessed with railroads that it missed the chance to grow into cars. Britain has an auto industry, but it was easily eclipsed by the American car startups like Henry Ford.
America's 20th Century industry was so obsessed with drugs that it's missing the chance to grow into stemcells. Not just from complacency, but from actually outlawing stemcell research. American medical domination of the world can be eclipsed by foreign startups without such handicaps.
The US laws against stemcell prohibit the public investments in the basic science that the medical industry requires to take risks and develop the science. We have entrepreneurs, but they're both averse to medical science and drawn to the indemnities and subsidies available to drug research instead. Abroad there is much less inhibition, which is an opportunity. So stemcell research isn't stopped worldwide, though it is slowed, and less available to the Americans who should be able to dominate it too, instead of being left behind.
--
make install -not war
FTA: We have developed a special chamber which is patented with the Bernard O'Brien logo and this essentially is an empty box into which we implant a blood vessel using microsurgery techniques. And this is the link with the microsurgery, that we use microsurgery to create this environment and we mix cells inside this chamber and we let them grow according to the specific environment that we can create.
I work in a biomedical engineering lab that develops new imaging techniques and we grow tissue phantoms comprised of cells embedded in a collagen matrix - I think they would fit the bill of a 3D cell matrix. Other professors at our university also work to grow neurons, vascular beds, and heart tissue. The difference is that this group can grow the matrix around a blood vessel using their chamber. The vascularization issue is the main problem facing tissue engineers today and their "patented chamber" allows them to bypass the problem, although I do not see this development as a major leap forward. Until tissue can be grown with functional capillary beds, something this group has not managed to do, it can not be incorporated into a working organ for implantation. At best these boxes can be used for research and perhaps in an artificial liver type device. It is interesting to note the beating heart cells, though.
The are actually different levels of immuno compatibility between different cells from different individuals . The "big red flags" of immnocompatibility are called the major histocompatibility complex (HMC's). Large differences in HMC genotypes pretty much ensures tissue rejection, called acute rejection. Twins and cloned tissue have identical MHC's, so this is why they are the prefered donors where possible. This is highest in the first 3 months after transplantation, and is lowered by immunosuppressive agents in maintenance therapy. There are also a host of minor histocompatibility complexes, which can over time elicit at response called chronic rejection, or chronic allograft vasculopathy, which takes about a decade and leads to fibrosis of the vasculature of the new organ. The reasons why some patients end up in rejection while others seem to adapt is not fully understood.
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
how do these cells stay alive? They need blood to carry the oxygen right?
Not really. I'm not a cell biologist, but I have a doctorate in a biology related field (grin).
Blood is extremely efficient at moving huge quantities of oxygen to a tissue, and getting rid of CO2 and other unwanted byproducts, however tissue does not require such an efficient transport medium all the time. The demands of a cell in a culture where all it has to do is grow, in an ideal liquid medium that is constantly replaced with optimum levels of nutrients, are not all that much, compared to inside the body, where the same cell is made to work (by nervous or hormonal action), is constantly exposed to toxic metabolites from other cells in the area as well as disease. The type of cell that demands most oxygen is the neuron - which is always energy starved. The other tissues (heart muscle, kidney, etc) can make do with a lot less oxygen if it's at rest (the extreme oxygen dependency of the heart is due to the macroscopic design of the organ rather than the tissue itself).
The human body can exist on nothing but salt water - I've seen it happen in extreme emergency situations where a patient has massive bleeding and not enough replacement blood is available. It's eerie to watch the blood turn from red, to pale pink, to almost transparent, at the bleed site. Usually these patients do not recover so well due to the swelling this causes, rather than lack of oxygen. We are talking about extreme situations and heroic measures here.
The cell cultures should be ok provided a sterile, isotonic, oxygenated and nutrient filled liquid is pumped through it. The body is limited by the atmospheric concentration of oxygen. Even at 100% efficiency, you can't increase the pO2 of the blood beyond a certain limit. You can do that artificially with 100% oxygen though. It doesn't have to be blood at all.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I imagine this wouldn't be very effective against cancer, for example.
You are correct. Cancer patients are rarely organ transplant recipients. With a few exceptions, the problem with cancer is not the damage it does to the single organ it affected at the beginning. It's the cumulative effect of the metastases (the other tumors that originated from the primary), all the inflammatory gunk the body produces, and the hormonal/electrolyte imbalances that occurthat ends up killing the patient. Not much point in putting in a new kidney when the lungs and brain are full of little tumors is there?
This would be great for trauma situations, as well as congenital (hereditary) diseases though.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
1. scaffolding - to build on (e.g. a heart is only useful if it has the correct dimensions and actions)
2. tissue variation and connections - if it doesn't connect well, and has specialization on the wrong side (e.g. the inside of a tissue is frequently different from the outside - just think of skin cells at various layers
3. nerves - no nerves in a growth state means we can't knit it together
4. comparable blood vessels, veins, arteries, capilliaries - for the blood you'll be needing
5. tissue compatability - this is critical, most organ transplants have major problems in their non-compatability - rejection is not a good thing, this is why everyone looks for the Holy Grail of Cloned Tissue (since it would automatically be compatable)
Oh, and until we see this done in the lab by three different research teams, it doesn't mean we can do it in real life. Just think of South Korea and their fake-out for why we're so skeptical. Although the canine experiment done there looks like it might be viable, and is therefore an advance.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This inkjet printer mod was done over a year ago and accomplished the same thing as far as I can tell.
I don't agree with the Liberal Party's politics. I don't agree with the Economic Rationalism that Costello uses to justify many of his economic decisions as Australia's 2nd most powerful politician.
But I can't help respecting this man. Imagine what the world could be like if all the filthy-rich politicians were to fund things like this with no strings attached. I will never vote for his party, but if he was a Queensland senator (he isnt) I'd have no problems giving him preferences right behind the party of my choice (the preceding ststement will make no sense for people with pseudo-democratic voting systems, like the US. Oh well!).
One of the incredibly cool things is that this research didn't rely on Industry Funding, so it's not going to be held for massive profit by some corporation - rather it's going to be "cheap" as stem cell and genomic treatments go.
Peter Costello, I salute you!