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Bioreactors Engineer Tissue To Mend Heart Damage
Hugh Pickens writes "Heart attacks usually cause irreversible damage to heart muscle and, because cells lost from the heart do not grow back naturally, leave the organ in a weakened and vulnerable state that may cause another serious condition — called heart failure — if the victim survives. Now a team of scientists led by Tal Dvir from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva has developed a tissue-engineering technique, using the body as a 'bioreactor,' to create a 'patch' made from heart muscle that can be used to fix scarring left over from a heart attack. First, a biodegradable 'scaffold' is seeded with immature cells taken from the hearts of newborn rats. For 48 hours, the scaffold is exposed to a cocktail of growth-promoting chemicals in the laboratory and is then transplanted into a rat's abdomen where it develops a network of blood vessels and muscle fibers. After seven days the patch is removed and grafted onto the animal's heart. A month later the patch has completely integrated itself into the heart, synchronizing its 'beat' with that of the surrounding tissue. 'Using the body as a bioreactor to engineer cardiac tissue with stable and functional blood vessel networks represents a significant improvement in cardiac patch performance over ex vivo (outside the body) methods currently used for patch production,' write the authors. The technique is also being developed for livers and bladders."
I know starting a political thread online is asking for guaranteed disaster, but whatever, it's late and I feel like expounding..
Israel. A tiny piece of country with hardly any natural resources to speak of and a large chunk of its GDP going annually toward its very survival, and this is the type of news coming out of there almost weekly.
Surrounded by oil-drenched, massive nations with nothing to lose, who produce practically nothing to contribute to the global human equation each year, besides hate rhetoric and abuse of human rights.
A place where democracy, free speech, and protection of religion are fundamental and constitutional rights. Where a major religion other than Judaism peacefully founded its headquarters (Ba'hai) and countless sub-groups live side by side (the Druz, the Bedhouins, Christians, Israeli Arabs, etc.), all protected under the same democracy.
This tiny nation whose brain power, intellectually liberal atmosphere, and the research and development born out of those elements are its only substantial exports.
Perfect track record? Hardly. But it sickens me that Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan are run as third world monarchies and dictatorships, with torture, suppression of the press and intimidation as par for their courses, yet get little press. Perhaps because people just don't want to confront "yet another" regime.
I just wish people would use all of their clearly available energy to start looking at all the wonderful neighbors in the region, complete with how they've treated their own Palestinian "problems".
Israel pushes ahead daily in science, math, engineering, medicine. How many articles do you see posted on here of Riyadh's glorious accomplishments? And they have just a few more bucks to throw around.
None of this makes Israel any more or less culpable in its involvement in the region's problems, but I just wish for once the hypocrisy would stop and people would turn the same critical eye toward the third world barbarisms that surround it.
You have a country that's looking more and more like Kendall Sq. and Silicon Valley every day, solving real problems and making real contributions to the world community. In fact, I wonder how many /. readers would rather find themselves in downtown Damascus or Aman than Tel Aviv, while having to openly declare their faith (or heck- lack thereof!)
It's an oasis of intellectualism and personal freedoms in a desert of suppression and despotism. I just wish more stories like TFA made it to the headlines than whether or not they gave enough warning time to their enemies before deploying potentially too-lethal munitions to stop rocket attacks. So thanks, /., for at least exposing on a regular basis what this country really signifies!