Rats Breathe Air From Lungs Grown In the Lab

cremeglace writes "'For the first time, an animal has drawn a breath with lungs cultivated in the lab.' Although preliminary, the results might eventually lead to replacement lungs for patients. Researchers at Yale University have successfully applied a technique called decellularization that involves using detergent to remove all of the cells from an organ, leaving a scaffold consisting of the fibrous material between cells."

Comments

As in TFS,

[mujadaddy]

"WITH" not "FROM"

Lucky Rats

[Lotana]

This is a wonderful age to be a mouse/rat.

Biotech is amazing!

Re:Lucky Rats

[Locke2005]

It's a great time to be a rat! Lawyers and politicians the world over rejoice!

Re:Lucky Rats

[hedwards]

I know you're kidding, but the lungs are hardly the only part of the body damaged by smoking. In fact it's relatively hard to find a part of the body which isn't impacted in one way or another by smoking.

Enter and Win!

[MarkvW]

Feeling like you're gonna die?
Feeling like you can't take another breath?
Enter the Philip Morris "WIN A LUNG" contest?

Just send in one Marlboro proof of purchase today!

Philip Morris: "Making things Better With Tobacco" (TM)

Void where prohibited by law.

Re:Enter and Win!

[cosm]

Honesty, as a dirty cigarette smoker, I would love the applications of this in the future. Seeing as smoking cigarettes is mostly consensual (granted your not encroaching on other peoples relative airspace, being tarnished with smoke on a crowded bus, or throwing your butts all over the damned place), I think this would be cool for the average person who enjoys cigarettes. The psychology of the previous statement (the enjoys portion) could obviously be argued, under the wing of the psychological / biological additions department.

But if I am smoker that participates in my habit respectful of the wishes of other, courteous in my carcinogen ingestion, would it be such a travesty if there were an abundant supply (IE, people who haven't consensually and knowingly destroyed their lungs getting first priority, and the excess up for auction / sale), giving the smoker the ability to purchase new lungs. This understandably does not counteract the hundreds of other detriments to the body smoking yields, but at least of the the major concern of many.

Of coarse any medical procedure that encourages a habit so vocally hated (yet balance book loved **tax revenue**), the average politician would have nothing of it the eyes of an irrational voter not seeing all sides of the argument for pay-per-lung adoption schemes, despite the process doling out fair opportunities to those in genuine need, I believe political rhetoric of fire-and-brimstone proportions would kill such a proposition before it even hit the table.

Re:Enter and Win!

[NotBornYesterday]

A friend's mother recently died of lung cancer, and I'd love to see lives extended by this that would otherwise be cut short. Of course, in a world with limited dollars to pay for medical care, one has to wonder if treating lung cancer or emphysema this way might sometimes come at the expense of treating someone else with a non-"consensual" condition like cystic fibrosis.

Re:Enter and Win!

[TheLink]

In some countries smokers put in MORE money into the system than take out. The "limited dollars" often come from them in the first place. For example in the UK, smoking related problems cost the national health care system 5 billion UK pounds a year, but the tobacco tax revenue is about 10 billion a year.

So just increase the tobacco tax in your country till it evens out or you get a net gain. Legit drug money...

I'm a nonsmoker and I'm fine if smokers want to make extra contributions to society, and die younger in countries where "aging population" is a concern. As long as there are nonsmoking places and smoking places (don't ban smoking in restaurants/pubs etc, just tax establishments that allow smoking more- then you allow choice and don't miss out on revenue).

People (especially children) should be educated on the dangers of smoking, but once they are adults smoking is not really a big problem to me. Second hand smoke might shorten my lifespan, big deal, bad drivers might shorten/ruin my life even more.

Re:Brains

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Brains in anything but the lowest order animals are far too complex for us to:

1. Keep alive without access to a circulatory system for the time needed to perform the transfer
2. Reconnect properly at the other end. They're riddled with blood vessels, and you need to make sure the connection to the rest of the body's nervous system is restored. Blood vessels are (relatively) easy, but hooking up each individual neuron properly? Not possible, and if they aren't hooked up immediately, the host body's heart would stop, along with hundreds of other more or less vital processes.

Beyond that, it would be completely pointless. Learned behaviors, depending on the type, are known from experimentation (and the occasional "lucky" bit of brain damage) to reside in specific lobes of the brain (e.g. most trained reflexes are controlled by the cerebellum). We'd learn nothing except that the scientists involved are immoral. Particularly since a lot of the training would be for the original body; trying to control a dissimilar body would make it nigh impossible to display the effects of any training due to the difficulty in just figuring out how to breathe, move, etc.

Re:Up next

[DigiShaman]

Rats with erections - Does that involve using them as a bottle opener?

What about kidneys?

[Daetrin]

The article mentions a similar procedure performed on the liver. Have they done any research into growing new kidneys? There are a lot of people dependent on dialysis who could really use a "quick and easy" way to get a new kidney. (At least as compared to the approximately seven year wait list for a donor transplant now. Or, you know, trying your luck in Thailand.)

Re:Next Step

[Relic of the Future]

Yeah; if you want to see impressive lungs, look at a bird.

The impressive thing about a whale's lungs, is the percentage of air exchanged in one breath. The impressive thing about a bird's lungs is the percentage of oxygen they can take from the air.

Re:Next Step

[RsG]

IIRC, it's more about their blood.

Not just that, but also the level of myoglobin in their muscle tissue. Sperm whales have incredible oxygen storage capabilities, and actually collapse their lungs when diving deep.

Turning Blue

[Master Moose]

"the results might eventually lead to replacement lungs for patients"

I won't hold my breath for it!

Re:Brains

[NeutronCowboy]

Pediatrist at Emory wants to disagree:http://www.pediatrics.emory.edu/ccm/lectures/files/Brain%20Death.ppt
Warning: PPT. Heart rate is controlled by various parts of the nervous system, including certain parts of the brain, but it is still most dependent on the autonomic nervous system. What stops the heart quickest is lack of oxygen through lack of respiration, which is what gets stopped once the brain stem gets removed.

Good News for Rats!

[Greyfox]

Now all those rats used in the smoking studies will be able to get new lungs! Hooray!

Re:Brains

[Kratisto]

Actually, the pace of the heart is set by the SA node. The brainstem and other factors can make the heart beat faster or slower in response to stress, but the heart paces itself.

Not quite there yet

[confused one]

The researchers allowed the animals to breathe with the lungs for up to 2 hours before euthanizing them because of blood clots.

They're not quite there yet...

Take a lung, leave a lung?

[justthisdude]

Each implant still requires the skeletal remains of someone else's organ. Where do they plan to get all these organs? I love the idea that every recipient needs to leave behind their old organ to form the basis of for the next guy's

It's the ultimate in recycling!.

Argh!

[jackd]

Rats Breathe Air From Lungs Grown In the Lab

Argh! Stop trying to cure rats. We have billions of rats, we don't need to try to heal the unhealthy ones.

Re:Next Step

[L4t3r4lu5]

For those who are having trouble with this concept, they're talking about the mammalian diving reflex. You'll get much better results searching for that than trying combinations of "lungs fill with fluid." In fact, once you've looked through all of the articles of punctured lungs, kidney failure, and congestive heart failure, you'll wonder why they'd think this is a benefit at all.

They're not

[justinlee37]

The researchers are not trying to save rats. They're trying to save human lives. Unfortunately, it isn't wise to use experimental medical procedures on humans as sometimes the treatment being tested ends up doing more harm than good.

I can't tell if you're just trying to be funny or if you really don't understand this.

Re:Next Step

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I think the nuggets were already dead before you put them in the pan....

Re:Next Step

[The_mad_linguist]

Well, the only people who've experienced it have gotten really good at freediving, like Yasemin Dalklç, so I imagine the physiological response only starts exhibiting itself once it gets enough external stimulus.