Slashdot Mirror
Wake Forest Researchers Swap Skin Grafts For Cell Spraying
TigerWolf2 writes with this excerpt from a Reuters story carried by Yahoo: "Inspired by a standard office inkjet printer, US researchers have rigged up a device that can spray skin cells directly onto burn victims, quickly protecting and healing their wounds as an alternative to skin grafts. ... Tests on mice showed the spray system, called bioprinting, could heal wounds quickly and safely, the researchers reported at the Translational Regenerative Medicine Forum."
... will bankrupt you.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Your fibroblasts cartridge is low. Would you like to connect to the HP Medical Printing website to order refills?
Looks like it cuts down on scarring as well, and it seems that grafting requires adding an additional injury from the donor section. Seems sensible not to do this.
My little sister actually had a summer internship with the Wake Forest Center for Regenerative Medicine. One of the things she would do is basically give puncture wounds to mice. After this experience, she apparently didn't want to be a researcher anymore.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Feeling bad about the rats is fine, it's normal.
But it's disingenuous to say they want to burn animals for a living. What they do for a living is try to build a device that could save many lives and help many more reduce their suffering. They are required to test them on animals before humans, it's part of the job. It's not a part of the job they like, but it's necessary so they do it. Could there be a sadistic few? Sure, but it's unlikely. There are far easier and better paid jobs that allow you to be sadistic to animals than research assistant at a lab. Rats are cheap, you can buy or even catch all you like. Getting your PhD to satisfy your sadism toward rats is taking things a bit far.
I would guess that most of them feel bad for the rats as well. But they can justify it with what they consider a higher purpose, reducing death and suffering. It might not be justifiable to you, but it is to them. It doesn't mean they like doing it.
And I respect your opinion if you don't think it's worth it. Just please recognize that both sides of the argument have merit, and don't assume those that think differently than you on the issue are amoral or hate animals, but probably only disagree with you over which is more important.
This sentence no verb.
It's already been pioneered, done and patented by Fiona Woods here in Australia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Wood. But we all know the USians only give a crap about their own patents, no-one else's. Just look at the shit-fight CSIRO had to go through to get money out of companies in the USA to honour their WiFi related patents.
There's a lot of work being done in this area right now- with good reason; there's tremendous potential, and the advance highlighted here is more of an incremental step in a rapidly maturing field than a breakthrough. As the parent notes, Dr. Fiona Wood pioneered a spray-on cell suspension over 15 years ago. She eventually founded a company (now called Avita Medical) which has commercialized this technology. In the last decade, it has been discovered that with minimal modification, an off-the-shelf inkjet printer can print living cells- this article is an example.
The story here from Wake Forest is apparently a successful test of using an inkjet to print directly on wounds using multiple cell types. The group reported these results at the Translational Regenerative Medicine Forum which took place the last few days. Who else happened to be at that forum? Avita Medical, where Dr. Wood still sits on the board.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Yeah, while the premise is the same, implementations are not. The device being tested in the US is not the same as the delivery mechanism Woods uses, hence no invalidation for prior art.
Besides, what Woods should really be recognized for is not the spray-on delivery, but instead the advances in culturing techniques. This was the real breakthrough, IMO.
Of note, Woods got a lot of criticism for using her methods without it going through clinical trials. They're still not out of clinical trials, AFAIK...
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai