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Whole Organ Grown In Animal For First Time
An anonymous reader writes British scientists have produced the first working organ grown from scratch in a living animal. Reprogrammed cells created in a lab were used in a mouse to produce a thymus. The organ was created using connective tissue cells from a mouse embryo and were converted into a different cell strain by changing a genetic switch in their DNA. The resulting cells grew into the whole organ after being injected. It has only been tested on mice so far, but researchers at Edinburgh University say that within a decade the procedure could be effective and safe enough for humans. The findings were published in Nature Cell Biology.
I have been growing whole, working organs in my own body since at least 1984.
You missed the entire point of the project.
The idea is not to grow new organs in animals for transplant into people, but to develop the means to inject a 'starter kit' of cells into the patient, and have the patient grow a new organ right in their own body.
So, for someone missing a lung to cancer, or a kidney, or a thymus, (apparently this is what they grew in the test) maybe a spleen, those things you can live without for a bit, (aided by modern medicine obviously) while your body manufactures a new one using their starter kit of cells. I suppose, now that I think about it, they might even be able to eventually grow you a new heart while your body ran on an artificial heart for a bit. The end goal here is to end the need for transplants by being able to force the body to build a new part from scratch. They pointed out that, at this stage, the technique still has the risk of rejection by the body, because it starts with fetal cells (they did this in mice by the way) but their goal is to eventually produce the same results using cells from the end host, so there is no rejection issues.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
So instead they just give you a third kidney that hopefully works a lot better than the two original ones that failed.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Maybe not.
One could grow organs inside a person's body or in a tube, but there are issues about blood supply, proper growth, etc. A possible solution would be to grow human organs in animal hosts. Transgenic pigs are often cited as a possible choice. They are about the right size for many organs and their immune system should be able to be tweaked so as not to reject the foreign tissue. Of course, this approach has other technical hurdles to overcome. I am not willing to bet on what the answer will be.
Still in the realm of science fiction but we are getting closer every day.