Lab-grown Kidneys Transplanted Into Rats

ananyo writes with this bit about lab grown organs from Nature: "Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have fitted rats with kidneys that were grown in a lab from stripped-down kidney scaffolds. When transplanted, these 'bioengineered' organs starting filtering the rodents' blood and making urine. The team, led by organ-regeneration specialist Harald Ott, started with the kidneys of recently deceased rats and used detergent to strip away the cells, leaving behind the underlying scaffold of connective tissues such as the structural components of blood vessels. They then regenerated the organ by seeding this scaffold with two cell types: human umbilical-vein cells to line the blood vessels, and kidney cells from newborn rats to produce the other tissues that make up the organ (paper)."

Comments

Fuck kidney

[oldhack]

What we need is liver.

Re:Fuck kidney

[Chrisq]

What we need is a bigger penis.

There, fixed that for you.

You don't need scientists to insert your penis into a rat

Re:Fuck kidney

[Neil Boekend]

Nope, my liver is fine. Its my kidneys that are fucked up.
By the way: this technique may be cross-organ applicable.

Re:Fuck kidney

[Anonymous Coward]

We crossed a rat with a Great Dane, now we got Mickey Mouse with a foot long dick that'll knock you down and do it doggy style.

Re:Fuck kidney

[Anonymous Coward]

There, fix at ed that for you.

There, fixed that for you, Small-Penis Man.

Re:Fuck kidney

[Big Hairy Ian]

Actually liver is one of the organs this technique may be able to replicate wake me when they can do Onions :)

Re:Fuck kidney

[Andrio]

When it comes to body parts, the liver is second only to the brain in complexity. It's not just about detoxifying stuff as a lot of people think. It performs some 500 functions throughout the body. It touches virtually every metabolic process in your body, in some way. So complex is it, it's the only organ in humans that is capable of self-regeneration. As little as 25% of one can regrow into a whole liver. The fact that it was deemed worthy of regenerative abilities compared to all other organs in the body is a testament to its importance.

So yeah, take care of your liver.

Re:Fuck kidney

[Anonymous Coward]

Why take care if it can regenerate so well? :)

Re:Fuck kidney

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need is a bigger penis.

There, fixed that for you.

You don't need scientists to insert your penis into a rat

South Park has proved this to be possible.

Re:Fuck kidney

[Chris Mattern]

So complex is it, it's the only organ in humans that is capable of self-regeneration. As little as 25% of one can regrow into a whole liver.

This would seem to imply to me that it would not be impossibly difficult to grow a new liver in a lab. All you have to do is hook into the self-regeneration properties and take advantage of them.

Re: Fuck kidney

[ceoyoyo]

You don't need a lab. You can take half of someone's liver, put it in someone else, and both will grow and function.

Re:Fuck kidney

[greenfruitsalad]

I, for one, wonder when rats became our new overlords. How come they can get new kidneys, be cured of baldness and diabetes, cloned, have intelligence and memory increased, etc.. When can I do to get this preferential treatment?

Re:Fuck kidney

[greenfruitsalad]

s/When/What (stupid autocompletion)

Re: Fuck kidney

[Anonymous Coward]

But then have to deal with the rejection problems in the recipient. The promise of lab-grown ones is that you strip the donor's cells leaving only the scaffold thereby removing anything they would reject and seed it with the patient's own cells which they won't reject.

Re:Fuck kidney

[geoffrobinson]

As someone with a kidney disease, let me note my dissent.

Re:Fuck kidney

[geekoid]

"So yeah, take care of your liver.

if the regen was worth a damn I wouldn't have to.

Re:Fuck kidney

[kaliann]

Structurally, the liver is not that complex, and -- as previously mentioned -- has amazing regenerative capacity.
Physiologically and biochemically, yes, individual hepatocytes have a phenomenal array of activities and functions. However, once you get hepatocytes developing in the liver scaffold, the fact that each of them is a marvel of biology is a moot point.

The liver's function is currently not something we can reproduce, but developing tech to regrow compatible livers en toto would solve the problem without having to address the 500+ functions you mention. I imagine it's progressing nicely.

The kidney is the opposite. We can artificially accomplish most of the function of a kidney (though it's horribly expensive an inconvenient), but the structure is a bit more complex than the liver (more varieties of specialized epithelium, for example, and the glomerulus is currently impossible to build) with very poor regenerative properties. Losing some liver usually means the organ grows some extra to replace the lost bit, losing some kidney generally does not.

  Conveniently, by using scaffolding already built and seeding with cells that can differentiate into the appropriate types, we can sort of short-cut the necessity of trying to build either organ whole.

Go science!

Re:Fuck kidney

[Neil Boekend]

Become a politician.

Bacon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Move toward not needing organ donation and having a better use for pig offal. Once only the scaffold of the organs remain there are no rejection issues with the final organ.

The price of bacon may also go down, win win.

Re:Bacon.

[wonkey_monkey]

The price of bacon may also go down, win win.

Not for the pig.

Re:Bacon.

[NettiWelho]

The price of bacon may also go down, win win.

Not for the pig.

Yeah, well, the pig should've thought about that before deciding to taste so damn delicious.

Re:Bacon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tastes just like long-pig.

Re:Bacon.

[cffrost]

I watched a BBC documentary this past year, the host of which sought to find out what "long-pig" tastes like. He went to a doctor and had his leg biopsied, then cooked the biopsy. However, he said he couldn't eat it due to UK law, so he took it to a lab, which placed the sample in a GCMS and told him what it would it taste like: a combination of mostly pork, plus poultry and lamb, if I remember correctly. I have little doubt he was willing to eat it, though, as this bloke drank his own piss during the same series.

Re:Bacon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you decide to put the meat into a pig. Why not grow bacon without a pig around it?

Re:Bacon.

[Immerman]

Indeed. There's already been some impressive research into using the intercellular matrix from pig intestine as a healing scaffold - the most dramatic case that I remember was a while back seeing a picture of a foot of someone with a diabetic ulcer that had eaten away a couple toes back partway through the arch. No established medical technique had been able to heal the wound, and I think amputation of the entire foot was beginning to be seriously considered. Then they slapped a sheet of i.i.c. matrix over it and it healed completely in I think a week or so - that is it skinned over and didn't come back. Sadly the toes didn't regenerate, that wouldv'e been *awesome*, but we're not quite there yet.

Re:Bacon.

[Sulphur]

Only if you decide to put the meat into a pig. Why not grow bacon without a pig around it?

What no blanket?

Re:Bacon.

[wonkey_monkey]

I watched a BBC documentary this past year

Let me guess - BBC Three?

Re:Bacon.

[cffrost]

I watched a BBC documentary this past year

Let me guess - BBC Three?

I'm sorry, I can't recall... I'm in NYS, and I get TV shows via BitTorrent. Thank you for the tip though; I'll keep an eye out for BBC Three's watermark if I happen to be eating. ;o)

Re:Bacon.

[Sulphur]

I watched a BBC documentary this past year, the host of which sought to find out what "long-pig" tastes like. He went to a doctor and had his leg biopsied, then cooked the biopsy. However, he said he couldn't eat it due to UK law, so he took it to a lab, which placed the sample in a GCMS and told him what it would it taste like: a combination of mostly pork, plus poultry and lamb, if I remember correctly. I have little doubt he was willing to eat it, though, as this bloke drank his own piss during the same series.

He is an actor? It should taste like ham,

Recycling

[mvar]

started with the kidneys of recently deceased rats

replace rats with humans and as George Carlin said on using dead people as fertilizer, "you want recycling? lets get serious"

Re:Recycling

[wonkey_monkey]

We do this already. Not the fertilizer thing (at least, not primarily, but I'm all for being buried in a cardboard box and turning into mulch), but the organ transplant thing. Now we've got a hack to bypass biological DRM. Better not let the MPAA hear about it.

Re:Recycling

[Gaygirlie]

replace rats with humans and as George Carlin said on using dead people as fertilizer, "you want recycling? lets get serious"

Well, I for one am all for someone doing something useful with my corpse when I'm dead, it's not like I'll have much use for it myself anyways. If someone wants to use me as a fertilizer I say go for it.

Re:Recycling

[alexgieg]

biological DRM

Wouldn't that be BRM? Although "bio-digital" (biogital?, bigital?) sounds awesome. Not the RM part though.

Re:Recycling

[Hognoxious]

Happen as mebbe, lad.

No, Congress hasn't grown more turgid since 1913

[Anonymous Coward]

We've a surfeit of penis in circulation, TYVM.

Lab-grown Kidneys Transplanted Into Rats

[hcs_$reboot]

Amazing. How do they manage to find all these rats in need of a kidney transplant?

Re:Lab-grown Kidneys Transplanted Into Rats

[tempest69]

Just loitering around the placed they were waiting for dialysis?

Hybrid devices

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a part of the body that could be used to create electricity?

Filter air or water?

Process food?

Can we use fish organs to create devices that can get the oxygen from water?

Finally

[Mikkeles]

'... and kidney cells from newborn rats to produce the other tissues that make up the organ.'

Finally, a good reason to have children.

Mass General

[rmdingler]

Ironic, as it was featured as a destination for the injured in Beantown yesterday... one of the many upbeat stories amid the carnage was the revelation by newscasters that the area has so many first rate medical facilities.

Re:Mass General

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean "Coincidently". It would have been ironic if the explosives were made of lab-grown kidneys.

coming up next

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

Lab grown artificial heart,liver,brain,hand,foot,ear,eye etc. Human augmentics FTW no more organ harvesters.

Re: coming up next

[Immerman]

Well that'll be a huge jump - the big discovery in this work is that the intercellular matrix, the "dead" stuff we used to assume was just the scaffolding holding everything together, is actually apparently rich in biological information instructing cells how to behave and organize. We're only just discovering how to use the stuff to grow organs rather than useless lumps of organ cells. For the forseeable future we'll still need to harvest organs for their matrix, the advantage will be that they don't have to be compatible with the recipient except in size, or even still alive or necessarily human - once we have the appropriate matrix we can grow a new organ from the recipient's own cells. And I suspect that the prepared matrix could be kept on ice for much longer than the living organ, allowing for the potential creation of "organ matrix" banks, and allowing the harvesting of matrices from deceased organ donors as needed rather than only being able to harvest from the tiny fraction who die in a manner that leaves their organs still alive long enough to harvest. Which now that I think of it would probably eliminate the usefulness of matrix banks in most scenarios - the death rate is much higher than the need for organs, the problem is just that not enough compatible organ donors die in a harvestable manner.

The next step will quite possibly be creating an artificial matrix, but that will be yet another major breakthrough away. We'll need to learn both how the matrix operates and how to recreate it artificially (ultra-high-res 3D printing no doubt, but with what materials?), and then it will still probably be a while before we can create one to rival the genuine article. Of course in the general trend of things it'll probably then be only a few more years before we can start to actually improve on the original (carbon-fiber reinforced arteries anyone?). The question will only be how much improvement is possible - the current designs have undergone a couple billion years of trial-and-error optimization, any significant improvements will likely require the sort of drastic overhauls that are extremely difficult to achieve via incremental evolution - i.e. escaping from the local maxima.

Not the revolution you are looking for.

[MassiveForces]

The printing of cells into organs using inkjet technology, and biological/artificial scaffolds is not new. Yes it's nice that they were able to start with just a particular scaffolding and a bunch of cells and turn it into an organ that functions, but this isn't the real challenge in regenerative tissue engineering.

The cells they chose were from the same type of organ from newborns, therefore there was a large number of stem cells in that particular mix which were already programmed to develop into a new kidney anyway.

The biggest problem is getting cells from your patient, then turning them into stem cells, and then setting them off with some sort of signal or series of signals to develop into a given tissue type. This avoids many host rejection problems and ethics considerations. It would also be useful in in-vitro lab work. For example, I am trying out scaffolds to see if I can get certain cell lines to differentiate into something that better resembles the functionality and complexity of lung tissue. If I could do that, we could reduce experimenting on animals to find out the effects of inhaling pollutants and so on.

3d organ printing

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a green future in this field. Very soon you will see kidneys, livers etc etc...
There is a company in west coast "organovo" who are working aggressively in this field. I am an investor too..

Re:3d organ printing

[Sulphur]

I see a green future in this field. Very soon you will see kidneys, livers etc etc...
There is a company in west coast "organovo" who are working aggressively in this field. I am an investor too..

Are you a community organdizer?

...a

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me that gets a creepy "Oh god, what are they doing now? I think I'm going to be sick" feeling from this article. I'm guessing it's the scaffolding, and the urine, and rats, and deceased corpses.. urkh..

In other news...

[JustNiz]

Diabetic rats everywhere are now rushing for kidney transplants.

Ultimate species

[codeButcher]

All these articles make me think that it must be really good to be a rat these days, what with all the medical advances available to them.

Not sure if a really sick rat could afford it, though....

Disclaimer: totally facetious, as always....

Auto-reconfig

[Empiric]

Out of curiosity, since we can clearly demonstrate human and animal cells (stem cells) that "know how" (that is, contain the necessary "reconfiguration" information) to individuate to generate all types of biological structures, what is the mainline argument against cells that intrinsically contain all the DNA "data" necessary to similarly individuate directly to varying species?

Surely the mainline Darwinian argument here is stronger than, "cells as of now, absolutely and provably so", and "cells as of back in distant history, no possible way"?

America is great. best medical care in the world.

[swschrad]

for rats.

As a kidney transplant recipient ...

[briancox2]

I can tell you that it is stories like this that I look for everyday. Transplanted kidneys suffer the same fate as all transplanted organs. My immune system will eventually find a way to get around the immuno-suppressive drugs I am always on and kill the kidney as it would any foreign cell in the body.

The liver will be one of the first lab-grown organs to be transplanted because the liver is a very simple organ. Nearly all cells of the liver do exactly the same thing.

But the kidney is a very complex organ that has a variety of glands and structures that perform different tasks. The kidney performs the following:

1. Clean waste material from the blood
2. Retain or excrete salt and water
3. Regulate blood pressure
4. Stimulate bone marrow to make red blood cells
5. Control the amount of calcium and phosphorous absorbed and excreted

Dialysis does only a few of these functions (1,2 and 5) and it does them very poorly. When on dialysis I was constantly fatigued and was having increased blood pressure issues. Since my transplant my life has been restored to normal. But one day that transplanted kidney will die. I just pray that it lives until the day that a story like this changes medical science.

Rats?

[jonathonlettvin]

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