Tweet
Lab Built Bladders are on the way!!!!
Hi All!!
First off I have to thank Dede for sending me this wonderful article. I actaully have been looking into the same thing. Dr. Charles Vacanti from University of Worcester has been researching cell regeneration (NOT STEM CELLS) and had already grown a full sized dog bladder in a lab. I actaully saw it on TV. Bladder are quite ugly and hairy looking [img]eek.gif[/img] Anyways there it was, this dog bladder in a big glass jar the size of a water cooler jug. I only caught the tail end of this special that the TLC channel had on cell regeneration and Dr. Charles A. Vacanti.
This article below features Dr. Anthony Atala. I'm hoping for some of us, this may be the answer!!!! Please read this its quite fascinating.
[quote] By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent
A leading surgeon in the US has told BBC News that he is ready to
perform the world's first transplant of an artificially grown organ.
Dr Anthony Atala, of the Boston
Children's Hospital, says he hopes
to put a laboratory-engineered
bladder into a patient once he has
obtained the necessary regulatory
approval.
He believes permission for the
procedure, which has been
pioneered in dogs, will come within
the next few months.
Dr Attalla says that if he is successful with the bladder transplant, he
will attempt to repair damaged hearts with new muscle and possibly
even try to grow a kidney.
Polymer ball
"I think over time there will be no limit," Dr Atala said. "I think it is
just a question of figuring out all the different tissue types and cell
types and how they work best, but eventually I think that following
the same strategies just about every organ in the body will be
repairable at the very least."
It was exactly two years ago that a team from the Laboratory for
Tissue Engineering at the Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical
School in Boston announced that it had successfully implanted six
beagle dogs with lab-grown bladders.
Tissue samples were taken from the animals' original bladders and
these were used to cultivate the muscle cells and special bladder
skin cells, called urothelial cells, needed to construct the artificial
organs.
The multiplying cells were shaped into beagle bladders by bedding
them down over polymer balls. Transplanted into the dogs, these
lab-grown organs allowed the animals to urinate normally.
Important ally
Dr Atala believes his technique is sufficiently well developed that it
could be used to treat a young child.
A lab-grown bladder could be the answer for a patient whose own
organ has been destroyed by cancer or damaged by an infection or
injury.
Dr Atala is seeking approval for human trials from the US Food and
Drug Administration.
Although tissue engineering has huge potential, Dr Atala believes
there will always be a need for donor organs. "I think tissue
engineering is just another solution but it should help reduce the
number of patients on a transplant list."
And, he believes, tissue engineering will prove to be a useful ally to
the emerging field of stem cell medicine, in which "young" cells are
injected into ailing tissue to regenerate it.
"For example, with a patient who has a failing heart, where
obviously it would be very hard to get a biopsy because they would
not tolerate the procedure; then I think stem cells would be the
ideal answer." <hr></blockquote>
First off I have to thank Dede for sending me this wonderful article. I actaully have been looking into the same thing. Dr. Charles Vacanti from University of Worcester has been researching cell regeneration (NOT STEM CELLS) and had already grown a full sized dog bladder in a lab. I actaully saw it on TV. Bladder are quite ugly and hairy looking [img]eek.gif[/img] Anyways there it was, this dog bladder in a big glass jar the size of a water cooler jug. I only caught the tail end of this special that the TLC channel had on cell regeneration and Dr. Charles A. Vacanti.
This article below features Dr. Anthony Atala. I'm hoping for some of us, this may be the answer!!!! Please read this its quite fascinating.
[quote] By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent
A leading surgeon in the US has told BBC News that he is ready to
perform the world's first transplant of an artificially grown organ.
Dr Anthony Atala, of the Boston
Children's Hospital, says he hopes
to put a laboratory-engineered
bladder into a patient once he has
obtained the necessary regulatory
approval.
He believes permission for the
procedure, which has been
pioneered in dogs, will come within
the next few months.
Dr Attalla says that if he is successful with the bladder transplant, he
will attempt to repair damaged hearts with new muscle and possibly
even try to grow a kidney.
Polymer ball
"I think over time there will be no limit," Dr Atala said. "I think it is
just a question of figuring out all the different tissue types and cell
types and how they work best, but eventually I think that following
the same strategies just about every organ in the body will be
repairable at the very least."
It was exactly two years ago that a team from the Laboratory for
Tissue Engineering at the Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical
School in Boston announced that it had successfully implanted six
beagle dogs with lab-grown bladders.
Tissue samples were taken from the animals' original bladders and
these were used to cultivate the muscle cells and special bladder
skin cells, called urothelial cells, needed to construct the artificial
organs.
The multiplying cells were shaped into beagle bladders by bedding
them down over polymer balls. Transplanted into the dogs, these
lab-grown organs allowed the animals to urinate normally.
Important ally
Dr Atala believes his technique is sufficiently well developed that it
could be used to treat a young child.
A lab-grown bladder could be the answer for a patient whose own
organ has been destroyed by cancer or damaged by an infection or
injury.
Dr Atala is seeking approval for human trials from the US Food and
Drug Administration.
Although tissue engineering has huge potential, Dr Atala believes
there will always be a need for donor organs. "I think tissue
engineering is just another solution but it should help reduce the
number of patients on a transplant list."
And, he believes, tissue engineering will prove to be a useful ally to
the emerging field of stem cell medicine, in which "young" cells are
injected into ailing tissue to regenerate it.
"For example, with a patient who has a failing heart, where
obviously it would be very hard to get a biopsy because they would
not tolerate the procedure; then I think stem cells would be the
ideal answer." <hr></blockquote>
Comment