One Day, Growing Spare Parts Inside the Body

NY Times ^ | September 17, 2012 | HENRY FOUNTAIN

[neverdem]

Dr. Tracy Grikscheit held a length of intestine in her gloved hands, examining it inch by inch as if she were checking a bicycle tube for leaks...

--snip--

Dr. Grikscheit’s work is at the forefront of efforts in laboratories around the world to build replacement organs and tissues. Although the long-sought goal of creating complex organs like hearts and livers to ease transplant shortages remains a long way off, researchers are having success making simpler structures like bladders and windpipes, thanks to advances in understanding stem cells...

--snip--

This kind of seeding of scaffolds with cells is a common approach in the field of regenerative medicine, also known as tissue engineering. But in most cases, the goal is to swap the bad organ — a windpipe, for example — with the engineered replacement, where it can grow into its permanent position in the body.

Dr. Grikscheit has had success in the lab with a different method, using another part of the body to nourish the replacement as it grows.

She and her team sew the bundle of cells into the mouse’s omentum, a membranous fold inside the abdomen. There, the bundle is surrounded by blood vessels that supply nutrients, helping it to grow. The plastic eventually dissolves as the bundle grows into a hollow ball of tissue. A few weeks later, Dr. Grikscheit and her researchers remove the ball from the omentum — for study, to better understand how the regenerative growth occurs. The tissue has all the components of intestines, including the lining, muscles, nerves and blood vessels.

In earlier studies in rats, Dr. Grikscheit went a step further, splicing the tissue into the digestive tract of animals that had had much of their intestines removed. Rats with the engineered intestine recovered more quickly than those without it...

[blueunicorn6]

Wow.....that’s why they call Obama a dickhead.

[One Name]

Count me out.

I’ll play the cards I’m dealt and catch ya’ll on the other side.

[KC_Lion]

No, no, no, Mass Effect proved that was a bad Idea!

[nomad]

Think you may get osteoarthritis some day? The Europeans are already using extracellular matrix in the form of the AMIC procedure to repair Hyalin cartilage in knees, only difference is they use micro fracturing and let the native messemchymal cells do the repair.I hear its better then the Carticel procedure.

[One Name]

Bring it. many will rejoice.

I’ll take my threescore and ten, or fourscore.

I don’t care to be a Frankenstein just to eke a few years out. I’ll go when God deigns, not before or after.

[garjog]

This is a great advancement. Freepers here are saying that they would deny taking advantage of this technology.

But, I bet that they would accept a metal stint or moving a leg vein from their leg and putting it in their diseased heart to live longer.

Growing a new vein under your skin would be much better since it would not be rejected.

We can choose to exercise and control our weight. God gave us a brain to figure out how to be healthy.

No excuse to blame being unhealthy on God.

Let’s say that you die.

You are standing before God.

You: Well God, I ate like a pig, never worked out in 25 years more than walking to the mail box and golfing. I had a 33 percent body fat. Then you made me drop dead when I was only 59. Why did you do that to me? Sheesh. You think that you would have given me a few more years.

God: Well you could have had your clogged heart fixed with that new internally grown tissue that I inspired the doctors to figure out. But, no. You chose to die early. So here you are. Now let’s take a look at the record....

[ROCKLOBSTER]

I’ll go when God deigns, not before or after.

I sent you a car, but no, that wasn't good enough.

I sent you a boat, but no, that wasn't good enough.

I sent you a helicopter, but no, that wasn't good enough.

[One Name]

He’ll probably send me a wheelbarrow...

[Only1choice____Freedom]

[KC_Lion]