Stem Cells Used To Grow Miniature Human Livers In Mice

ananyo writes "Transplanting tiny 'liver buds' constructed from human stem cells restores liver function in mice, researchers have found. Although preliminary, the results offer a potential path towards developing treatments for the thousands of patients awaiting liver transplants every year. The liver buds, approximately 4 mm across, staved off death in mice with liver failure, the researchers report this week in Nature (abstract.). The transplanted structures also took on a range of liver functions — secreting liver-specific proteins and producing human-specific metabolites. But perhaps most notably, these buds quickly hooked up with nearby blood vessels and continued to grow after transplantation."

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By the way: With Obamacare...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

By the way, with Obamacare (or any other single-government-payer system) you can expect such new treatments to NEVER be deployed - or even developed.

If such a new procedure succeeded it would mean paying a lot of extra money saving the person, after which it would mean paying MORE money as they live longer to collect more benefits, further straining an already self-bankrupting system.

Preventing this is what "death panels" are about.

(As a government official once said - about in 1979 or so, when the impending bankruptcy of Social Security was first being hand-wrung over - "We've got to get the death rate up to meet the birth rate.")