Growing Your Own New Organs-Regenerative Medicine

yorkere

New member
I just came across this; it's a little long, but really quite interesting....I hope this won't be considered to be off-topic...


Grow Your Own Replacement Parts

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., Feb. 6, 2008(CBS) About 98,000 people are on a waiting list for transplants right now. Many of them will die before they get one. Now, a new generation of researchers is changing that, one cell at a time. This is the first in a two-part CBS News series on the innovative field of regenerative medicine. Scroll to the end for more information.

In what you might call the laboratory of the future, Dr Anthony Atala is manufacturing body parts.

"Here you see an engineered blood vessel," he said. "You can actually see the vessel beating."

From blood vessels to muscle tissue, Atala and his team at Wake Forest University believe that in theory anything inside the body can be grown outside the body, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports. And it's real: They've made 18 different types of tissue so far.

"That's a heart valve?" Andrews asked. Atala said: "This is an engineered heart valve."

What he pointed to was a pulsing heart valve to be transplanted into a sheep.

"When people ask me 'what do you do,' we grow tissues and organs," he said. "We are making body parts that we can implant right back into patients."

Once considered a Frankenstein fantasy, the field of regenerative medicine is on the verge of unimagined breakthroughs. Scientists believe every part of the body has cells capable of regeneration - all researchers need to do is isolate those cells and coax them to grow.

And they use heart cells in an ink jet printer.

In the lab CBS News toured, the heart of a mouse was being made - a heart they grew layer by layer, by spraying the cells with a printer.

"So your heart cell is programmed to make more heart tissue, your bladder cells are programmed to make more bladder cells," Atala explained.

And it's Atala's work with human bladders that's truly on the frontier. In a clinical trial at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, a patient got a bladder transplant - with a new bladder grown from her own cells.

Using Atala's regeneration techniques, her bladder cells were isolated, multiplied and seeded onto a biodegradable scaffold. Eight weeks later, her new bladder is in the operating room ready for transplant. Dr. Patrick Shenot is her transplant surgeon.

"Its very much the future, but its today," Shenot said. "We are doing this today."

What's coming from this technology is a future of highly personal, mail-order medicine, where in order to cure your disease, your doctor will order you a replacement organ or body part and it will be custom made for you, using your own cells.

For the tens of thousands of patients who need organ transplants, this technology brings hope.

Hugh Snyder needs a bladder. And it could be a bladder from his own cells.

"Yeah. I would never have thought this ... possible," Snyder said.

Corporate America already sees what's possible. The Tengion Company has bought the license, built the factory, and is already making the bladders developed at Wake Forest.

"We're actually building a very real business around a very real and compelling patient need," said Dr. Steven Nichtberger, Tengion's CEO.

He says the company also plans to mass-produce blood vessels and kidneys.

"In regenerative medicine, I think it is similar to the semiconductor industry of the 1980s," Nichtberger said. "You don't know where its going to go, but you know its big."

This brand-new kind of medicine and this brand-new industry are set to change the landscape for transplanting organs. Patients in the future, instead of waiting years for a donated organ, will wait a few weeks and ? grow their own.

For more on regenerative medicine and organ transplants, check out:

# The McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
# The non-profit United Network for Organ Sharing.
# The non-profit Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.
# The non-profit organ and tissue donation group, Gift Of Life Organ Donation.
# Wake Forest University.
# Tengion Company.



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barbara

Pioneer Founding member
What is your job title?

I think it's a very interesting article. Can you imagine getting an organ that is custom made out of your own cells? Or better yet, working at the "factory". What will this new occupation be called? This is so fascinating and just a small glimpse of what is coming down the pike in my opinion. Don't worry about off topic either. This forum is not full of rules and regulations unless someone gets mean, then we do have to lay down the law. Thanks for posting this.
 

Lee

New member
20 years

I can't even imagine what it will be available in 20 years.
Here is another article I found interesting.

Breast milk contains stem cells
Monday, 11 February 2008
By Catherine Madden

The Perth scientist who made the world-first discovery that human breast milk contains stem cells is confident that within five years scientists will be harvesting them to research treatment for conditions as far-reaching as spinal injuries, diabetes and Parkinson's disease.

But what Dr Mark Cregan is excited about right now is the promise that his discovery could be the start of many more exciting revelations about the potency of breast milk.

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20081102-16879.html
 

yorkere

New member
The Implications

Barbara:

This whole thing is beginning to assume surrealistic overtones; the key item in what I first posted is that they have actually ALREADY (apparently) done this for someone who needed a new bladder....please allow me to re-quote:

"And it's Atala's work with human bladders that's truly on the frontier. In a clinical trial at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, a patient got a bladder transplant - with a new bladder grown from her own cells.

Using Atala's regeneration techniques, her bladder cells were isolated, multiplied and seeded onto a biodegradable scaffold. Eight weeks later, her new bladder is in the operating room ready for transplant. Dr. Patrick Shenot is her transplant surgeon.

"Its very much the future, but its today," Shenot said. "We are doing this today."


I know full well, as do all of us, that a next step will be kidneys, then other organs....I would strongly suggest to other members of this marvelous Web site who would have a personal vested interest in the prospect of a freshly grown new bladder for themselves, that they look up this "Tengion Company" on the 'Net and FIND OUT!!
 

barbara

Pioneer Founding member
Bladders are available now.

So right you are. The technology for a new bladder is here and now. I don't believe any other organs were available yet. Correct me if I'm wrong. This is awesome news. The bladder can be affected by other diseases also and this could certainly offer hope where there was none before. Truly amazing.
 

hlichten

Super Moderator
So right you are. The technology for a new bladder is here and now. I don't believe any other organs were available yet. Correct me if I'm wrong. This is awesome news. The bladder can be affected by other diseases also and this could certainly offer hope where there was none before. Truly amazing.
Wow!
Think of the trips from bed to bathroom that would save me in a month!! :)
 

Lee

New member
Growing Your Own New Organs-Regenerative Medicine - Part 2

On 2-11-98 yorkere posted Growing Your Own New Organs-Regenerative Medicine the first part of a CBS searies on the innovative field of regenerative medicine. This is part 2.

You might become a believer in the power of magic dust, when you see how a special powder re-grew the tip of Lee Spievack's finger.

He sliced off a half inch of his finger in the propeller of a hobby shop airplane. His finger never even formed a scar.

"Your finger grew back flesh, blood, vessels and nail?" CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports.

"Four weeks," Spievak said.

Is this essentially what re-grew Spievak's finger.

This powder is a medical product called extracellular matrix. Made from pig bladders, it is a mix of protein and connective tissue surgeons often use to repair tendons.

But it's the matrix's unusual power to regenerate tissue that's helping launch a new field: regenerative medicine.

"It tells the body, start that process of tissue re-growth," said Dr. Stephen Badylak of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Regenerative Medicine.

Badylak believes the matrix somehow mobilizes cells, some of them adult stem cells whose job it is to maintain and repair injured tissue.

"It will change the body from thinking that its responding to inflammation and injury to thinking that it needs to re-grow normal tissue," Badylak said.

If this helped Mr Spievak's finger re-grow, could you grow a whole limb?

"In theory," Badylak said.

That theory, that it might be possible to re-grow a limb, is about to be tested by the United States Military. The Army, working in conjuction with the University of Pittsburgh, is about to use that matrix on the amputated fingers of soldiers home from the war.

Dr. Steven Wolf, at the Army Institute of Surgical Research, says the military has invested millions of dollars in Regenerative research, hoping to re-grow limbs, lost muscle, even burned skin.

"And it's hard to ignore this guys missing half his skin, this guy's missing his leg," Wolf said. "Is there any way we can make that grow back? Some of that technology exists and now its time to field it."

Several different technologies for harnessing regeneration are now in clinical trials around the world. One machine, being tested in Germany, sprays a burn patient's own cells onto a burn, signaling the skin to re-grow.

Badylak is about to implant matrix material - shaped like an esophagus - into patients with throat cancer.
"We fully expect that this material will cause the body to re-form normal esophageal tissue," Badylak said.

Some of the most advanced tests involve the heart. This patch of material is being put on - like a band aid - to regenerate heart muscle damaged by a heart attack.

And patient Mary Beth Babo is getting her own adult stem cells injected into her heart, in hopes of growing new arteries. Her surgeon is Dr. Joon Lee.

"It's what we consider the Holy Grail of our field for coronary heart disease," Lee said.

The Holy Grail, because if stem cells can re-grow arteries, there's less need for surgery.

"If people don't have to go through that, this would be the way to go for sure," Babo said.

Lee Spievak jokes he's got a 69-year-old body and a two-year-old fingertip.
But his fingertip has researchers imagining a time when re-grown limbs replace prosthetics, when re-grown tissues replace surgery, when the body does its healing with its own cells from within.

http://www.stemcellpioneers.com/showthread.php?t=658
 

barbara

Pioneer Founding member
Amazing -

Lee - Thanks for posting this. Not too long ago, reading something like this would have found a person in the science fiction section at the library. Absolutely amazing.
 

yorkere

New member
Another Item Regarding those Bladders!!

Here's where the bladder implants were done:

Wake Forest Physician Reports First Human Recipients of Laboratory-Grown Organs

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- The first human recipients of laboratory-grown organs were reported today by Anthony Atala, M.D., director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. In The Lancet, Atala describes long-term success in children and teenagers who received bladders grown from their own cells.

"This is one small step in our ability to go forward in replacing damaged tissues and organs," said Atala, who is now working to grow 20 different tissues and organs, including blood vessels and hearts, in the laboratory.

The engineered bladders were grown from the patients' own cells, so there is no risk of rejection. Scientists hope that laboratory-grown organs can one day help solve the shortage of donated organs available for transplantation. Atala reported that the bladders showed improved function over time -- with some patients being followed for more than seven years.

The study involved patients from 4 to 19 years old who had poor bladder function because of a congenital birth defect that causes incomplete closure of the spine. Their bladders were not pliable and the high pressures could be transmitted to their kidneys, possibly leading to kidney damage. They had urinary leakage, as frequently as every 30 minutes.

The main goal of the surgery was to reduce pressures inside the bladder to preserve the kidneys. In addition, urinary incontinence, which was a problem before the surgery, improved in all patients.
"It is rewarding when you can see the improved quality of life in these patients," said Atala.

The patients were candidates for a procedure to repair the non-functioning bladder tissue with tissue from the intestines. This 100-year-old procedure is also used to "build" bladders for patients with bladder cancer. But because the intestine is designed to absorb nutrients and a bladder is designed to excrete, patients who have the procedure are prone to such problems as osteoporosis, increased risk of cancer and kidney stone formation.

Atala had been working since 1990 to build bladders from patients' own cells and in 1999 implanted the first organ in a patient. His current report discusses the long-term results with seven children who had the surgery.

"We wanted to go slowly and carefully and make sure we did it the right way," said Atala. "This is a small, limited experience, but it has enough follow-up to show us that tissue engineering is a viable tool that will allow us to tackle problems of similar magnitude."

The report involves children who were treated at Boston Children's Hospital when Atala was director of the Tissue Engineering and Cellular Therapeutics at Harvard Medical School. In 2004, Atala's program moved to Wake Forest.

The process for growing each patient's organ began with a biopsy to get samples of muscle cells and the cells that line the bladder walls. These cells were grown in a culture in the laboratory until there were enough cells to place onto a specially constructed biodegradable mold, or scaffold, shaped like a bladder.

The cells continued to grow. Then, seven or eight weeks after the biopsy, the engineered bladders were sutured to patients' original bladders during surgery. The scaffold was designed to degrade as the bladder tissue integrated with the body. Testing showed that the engineered bladders functioned as well as bladders that are repaired with intestine tissue, but with none of the ill effects.

"We have shown that regenerative medicine techniques can be used to generate functional bladders that are durable," said Atala. "This suggests that regenerative medicine may one day be a solution to the shortage of donor organs in this country for those needing transplants."

Atala said the approach needs further study before it can be widely used. Additional clinical trials of the bladders are scheduled to begin later this year.

Atala also directs the National Regenerative Medicine Foundation, which recently received $1 million from the federal government to create a Soldier Treatment and Regeneration Consortium to research how to treat burns and grow limbs for wounded soldiers.

Atala's co-researchers on the bladder report are Shay Soker, Ph.D., and James Yoo, Ph.D., with Wake Forest, and Alan Retik, M.D. and Stuart Bauer, M.D., with Harvard.


Please note that there is no DATE to this release; I couldn't find one...
 
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barbara

Pioneer Founding member
Excellent post

Amazing that this has been going on now for several years right under our very noses! There is so much progress being made that should be getting a lot more media attention. This is a good example. I have never seen this article before or heard about bladder regeneration like this. It seems to be working quite well since some of the patients have been followed for several years.
 
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