I Hate Dialysis Message Board
Dialysis Discussion => Dialysis: News Articles => Topic started by: BigSky on January 13, 2008, 02:09:56 PM
-
Hopes of custom-built organs as scientists create beating heart
Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor
SCIENTISTS have created a beating heart in the laboratory in a breakthrough that could allow doctors one day to make a range of organs for transplant almost from scratch.
The procedure involved stripping all the existing cells from a dead heart so that only the protein “skeleton” that created its shape was left.
Then the skeleton was seeded with live “progenitor” cells, which multiplied and grew back over it, eventually linking together into a new organ. Such cells are involved in the formative stages of specialised types of tissue such as those found in the heart.
The research, by scientists at the University of Minnesota, has so far been done only with rats and pigs and is highly experimental. It is unlikely to be applied to humans for years.
However, Professor Doris Taylor, director of the university’s centre for cardiovascular repair, believes it could be a significant step towards creating custom-built hearts, blood vessels and other organs for people with serious illness.
The big advantage of such an approach is that organs so built would use stem cells taken from the patient so the body’s immune system would not reject them.
“The idea would be to develop transplantable blood vessels or whole organs that are made from your own cells,” Taylor said. “It opens a door to the notion that you can make any organ - kidney, liver or pancreas. You name it and we hope we can make it.”
Taylor and her colleagues used a process called decellularisation, in which powerful chemicals strip the cells from a dead animal heart. The researchers then reseeded the remaining protein skeleton with progenitor cells taken from the hearts of newborn animals and let them grow. Taylor said that four days after seeding, the cells could be seen contracting, and after eight days the hearts started contracting.
“We took nature’s building blocks to build a new organ,” said Harald Ott, who worked with Taylor. “When we saw the first contractions we were speechless.”
The new technique was reported at the American Heart Association’s recent annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. “This is a proof of concept,” Taylor said. “Going forward, our goal is to use a patient’s stem cells to build a new heart.”
- A new system of teams of surgeons working round the clock to retrieve kidneys and hearts from dead patients will be announced by a government body this week in an attempt to increase organ transplantation by 50% within five years.
The government’s organ donation taskforce will also announce the appointment of 100 more organ transplant co-ordinators, who will persuade relatives to agree to the organs of their deceased loved ones being used for transplantation.
It is also considering whether the government should introduce laws to allow organs to be taken from patients after death unless they have specifically expressed a wish not to donate their tissues.
Gordon Brown today signals his support for the policy of "presumed consent".
Writing in a Sunday newspaper the prime minister says: "A system of this kind seems to have the potential to close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery in the UK and the limits imposed by our current system of consent."
Sir Liam Donaldson, England's chief medical officer, who also supports the policy, said: "We have one of the lowest rates [of organ donation] in Europe."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article3177646.ece
-
I just saw a report on Headline News about them "regenerating" the dead heart. That is so amazing! There's hope that some of us on here may never have to face The List again, because they'll be able to grow kidneys from our own cells. :bow; If not in my lifetime, absolutely in my son's (not that he'll need it, since my kidney problems are not genetic, thank goodness!). I am so excited by this!!
-
That is amazing. I wonder what the heart "skeleton" looks like?
-
I watched this on the news in the emergency room last night and thought how many people this could save.
-
What they showed on the news looked like a pink balloon that was beating, nothing more or less. Very interesting. Not near as complicated as a living heart.
-
Just imagine.. this kind of breakthrough when worked out for kidneys and for humans could make dialysis virtually a thing of the past - except for acute cases where there is no time to "grow a kidney" - and even then hopefully it might only be a procedure that need be for a limited time. With no rejection issues the whole drug regimen would be so much simpler and post "transplant"(well I guess it would be a different term?? not sure) recovery and issues would be reduced so much just removing all that stuff to supress the imune system. How very exciting.. even if I never see it personally... it's the sort of thing from Science Fiction...
....indeed remember Star Trek IV from 1986? The one scene where McCoy gives the dialysis patient a pill AND IT GROWS HER A NEW KIDNEY!!!
Well we got the idea of mobile phones from Star Trek - maybe regrowing kidneys... in 50 years or whatever!
Oh it is nice to dream!
-
This technology would be awesome. It's how I think the future will handle such issues. Someday they will look back at what we do now and laugh. It's amazing we have come as far as we have since the first kidney transplant and dialysis machine.