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NASA/MIT Can Successfully Grow Human Tissue
mathowie writes "[MIT] scientists use a NASA-developed device in a first step towards tissue engineering. The cell constructs are less than 1/5-inch across, but represent a significant step in developing replacement parts for damaged organs.
Need a heart? No problem! You say you're short one kidney? Heck we can get one for you! With technology like this, I really should take up smoking, if I ever need a lung, someone can grow one for me. " I have someone close to me who has a weak heart - advancements like this will make a huge difference in the future.
AngryMob dun said:
In some cases, yes...in most cases of genetic diseases an organ transplant will do exactly Jack and Shite, because most genetic diseases are from complex inborn errors of metabolism. (To tie onto another thread here, the infant euthanasia one--I seriously doubt organ-growing clinics are going to help kids with fatal degenerative brain diseases like Tay-Sach's or ALD (adrenoleukodystrophy--the "Lorenzo's Oil" disease) or chromosomal disorders like inversions and trisomies/monosomies, because even WITH organ-growing clinics it's going to be a long time, if ever, before we can grow a baby a new brain [and you could seriously argue that in that case you're not so much giving a dying child a new brain as giving a new intelligence a donated body, if one sees the essence of "what makes me, me" as centered in the brain]...and in the case of most of your really bad genetically-based brain diseases (like most of your brain degenerative diseases that do not involve the actual chromosomes fucking up in replicating themselves) you will have to repeat the process every so often because the brain gets destroyed by toxic byproducts the body can't remove because of a farged-up metabolism. This is also true in most cases of muscular dystrophy [you are either going to have to do a transplant of ALL the muscles in someone's body, or replace ALL the mitochondria in their body [a really surprising number of forms of muscular dystrophy are inherited NOT by one's chromosomal genes but are actually genetic diseases of one's mitochondria--a "Parasite Eve" sort of situation would not mutate one so much as probably leave one unable to move and probably brain damaged to boot].)
For that matter, let's take the example you noted above--diabetes. (I happen to have a personal interest in the genetics of diabetes and other disorders of glucose metabolism. I happen to be from a family of which I am one of maybe four or five people in a large extended kindred who does not yet have something wonky going on with my glucose metabolism [hypoglycemia or diabetes]; in my family it's also been shown that hypoglycemia and diabetes are related, and we've actually been asked to join in genetic studies because we're a glucose-metabolism-disorder cluster.) There are two main types of diabetes mellitus ("sugar diabetes"--there is another kind of diabetes, diabetes insipidus, which is due to inappropriate secretion of diuretic hormones from one's pituitary gland and is not related at all other than being yet another endocrine disorder; both are named diabetes because a major symptom of both is one has to pee a lot :)--type 1, which usually hits from birth to one's twenties, and type 2 which hits from about the late 20's onward and is associated with obesity.
There is a lot of evidence to point to the fact that diabetes in general is inherited, and that certain populations [Native Americans and, if memory serves, Australian Aboriginals as well] have a much higher susceptibility to Type II diabetes because they essentially don't have the ability to handle refined sugars and carbohydrates as well as Europeans [it's the same reason Asians and some other folks have a high incidence of lactose intolerance--it's also been experimentally proven European diet is to blame at least among Pima peoples in the US Southwest, who have an unusually high incidence of Type II diabetes but tend NOT to have the problems when eating a traditional diet]. Type I diabetes tends to occur at roughly the same rate everywhere except in certain kindreds.
Type I diabetes is now pretty well known to be an autoimmune disorder in which somehow the body is tricked into destroying its own Islet cells; most research is pointing to viral infections being the main trigger, and several genes for Type I diabetes have been found. I honestly don't know what use a pancreas transplant would do long-term (there are the beginnings of clinical trials being done with Islet cell transplants); you might also have to replace their bone marrow to fix the underlying autoimmune disorder. (As an aside--some scientists now think something similar may also happen with Crohn's disease [a severe form of colitis that is sometimes associated with colon cancer] and with multiple sclerosis--since certain types of immune-system regulators DO relieve symptoms of the diseases. There are some clinical trials also being done in this vein with people in Type I diabetes "clusters" in an attempt to keep them from ever developing diabetes.)
Just as a minor aside--Type I diabetes used to be called "juvenile diabetes" but it does not just occur in juveniles--20- and 30-year-old people (and sometimes older) have spontaneously developed Type I diabetes. With this kind you have to take insulin shots--diet and/or "diabetes pills" will NOT control it, and if it is not controlled you WILL get desperately sick. The really bad kind of Type I where one has a devil of a time controlling blood glucose is sometimes known as "brittle diabetes". (My grandmother died of complications of late-onset Type I diabetes, so I know all too well that it ain't just kids who get it.) You could also prolly call this "Bret Michaels Disease" if one wants a nice celebrity spokesperson (Bret Michaels, formerly of the band Poison and now a movie director, has Type I diabetes and did a lot of spokespersoning for the American Diabetes Association in the 80's). :)
Type II diabetes is generally caused because one's body produces insulin normally but somehow one's body stops reacting to it normally. [The underlying mechanisms of this are still being figured out; in some cases it's a kind of autoimmune disorder where the body develops antibodies to insulin, in others there are other mechanisms.] A lot of times Type II diabetes can be controlled by diet or by losing weight [obesity is a MAJOR risk factor for Type II]; for those who can't, there are "diabetes pills" that basically help the body's own insulin work better. In cases where they get bad enough to require insulin, sometimes they have to receive massive doses. An organ transplant or "grow-your-own" probably would NOT work here (except, again, for those rare kinds of Type II where the body has antibodies to insulin) because it's more of a metabolic disorder that is still not entirely well understood.
There might be another type of diabetes yet-- in many cases that seem to fall between Type I and Type II diabetes, it's almost as if the Islet cells "burn out"--people tend to either become hypoglycemic, will go straight to diabetes, or will be hypoglycemic for some years before converting to full-blown diabetes (which may or may not be insulin-dependant). (This happens to be the particular variant that runs in my family, and may actually be some weird form of Type I diabetes.) I also don't know how an organ transplant or "grow-your-own" would help here; if it's like Type I you'd prolly need a bone marrow transplant too, and if it's due to some funky metabolic disorder that causes one's Islet cells to essentially be the equivalent of tiny insulin-producing Replicants there might be no cure other than constantly replacing them and carrying candies around [because it might be an underlying metabolic disorder].
Needless to say, though, "pancreas on a Petri dish" is not going to be a cure for diabetes anytime soon. :P
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
To everyone who's constantly dissing the space program as a waste of money, I say this:
"The Bioreactor was developed by NASA to simulate the weightless environment of space"
Space flight isn't just a luxury; it's a necessity. People who can't see that may need other means of persuasion; this is one of the better ones.
This is a tissue culture that grows in a mold.
This doesn't let us grow organs from scratch.
You have to have some differentiated cells in order to seed the culture. If you don't have a liver/kidney/... to begin with, you have nothing to work with.
You'd still have to piece an organ together, one tissue at a time. Just think of how many components are in the heart: valves, neural wiring (building a pacemaker from scratch'll be easy), and a nightmare of a vascular network...
What this does let us do is build individual components from scratch. Hole in your heart? This could make a patch for it (provided you're still alive). But certainly nothing more complex.