Organ regeneration must be option

Organ regeneration must be option
January 08, 2011 4:57 PM
BY MIKE SHELTON - SPECIAL TO THE YUMA SUN
There are more than 105,000 people on the waiting list for transplants. The number of people needing a transplant continues to rise faster than the number of donors. About 4,100 transplant candidates are added to the national waiting list each month. Each day about 77 people receive organ transplants About 18 people die each day waiting for a matching organ.

Why aren’t we able to repair and grow our own organs? Why is it that people with failing kidneys have only two difficult choices: either dialysis or transplant?

I know more than one person on dialysis and that is at best a necessary evil. Time revolves around entering a dialysis center, lying down and being connected to a machine that reminds me of the Borg from Star Trek. You are stuck in one place and not getting up for 3 or 4 hours. That is repeated three days a week for the rest of one’s life.

Is this it? Is this all there is? For now, yes. But maybe not forever.

Fortunately there are a number of medical institutions and private interests at home and abroad to add better options like the option of regenerating or growing kidneys from one’s own body and reimplanting them. No donor needed. No organ rejection.

Some of the most serious researchers include:

• The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina. They have the world’s largest lab devoted to bioengineering body parts. They are now working on 22 tissues and organs, including lungs, hearts, livers and kidneys.

• The McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Stephen Badylak has pioneered the use of extra cellular matrix made from pig bladder to trigger regrowth in body organs. Most recently to repair and regrow an esophagus destroyed by cancer.

• The European Union is funding research with the explicit goal of “kidney regeneration instead of dialysis or transplantation.” The Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Bergamo, Italy is carrying this work.

• The UC Davis Institute for Regenerative Cures at the University of UC Davis has teams of researchers working on every form of repair and regenerative therapy.
None of these institutions, or any other to my knowledge, is close to engaging in human clinical trials. Most are barely at the rat stage.

One that is ahead of the pack in Tengion Inc. out of Pennsylvania. On Oct. 25, 2010, Tengion presented large animal data demonstrating functional kidney regeneration at the American Society for Transplantation Annual Conference

In a one-year study using dogs, their product showed results in improved kidney function in canines with chronic kidney disease, a condition afflicting millions of Americans. They are seeing progress in using the patients’ own kidney cells, procured by a routine biopsy, which are then implanted in the failing kidney, leading to the regeneration of the functional kidney tissue.

Why am I interested? Because I have this condition. Thankfully, I have a donor, a close friend. I join the many around the nation and the world hoping for significant breakthroughs that won’t be halted by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration that would rather see you die than let you volunteer for an experimental clinical trial.

Hurry up and start growing these organs. Some of us don’t have all day.

Mike Shelton is a Yuma resident and guest columnist for the Yuma Sun. E-mail him at mikshelt@msn.com

http://www.yumasun.com/opinion/people-66690-waiting-organ.html