Lab-grown body parts isn't the stuff of sci-fi
By ALAN BAVLEY
The Kansas City Star
At the University of Missouri in Columbia, Gabor Forgacs uses a
distant cousin of a computer printer to build living blood vessels.
He has succeeded in making vessels that branch the way real veins and
arteries do. Ultimately, he wants to build replacement organs.
COLUMBIA | Your heart is failing critically. A transplant would save
your life, but the waiting list is long and the odds are stacked
against you.
So instead, doctors extract some of your bone marrow, heart and
muscle cells, go back to their laboratory and return in four to six
weeks with … a freshly grown heart.
Engineering body parts — tissues and whole organs that are
genetically compatible and available on demand — sounds like science
fiction. But researchers at medical centers around the world are
working to make it a reality.
Already, a handful of children with spina bifida have received new
bladders. Replacement blood vessels are being tested on dialysis
patients. And researchers have re-created a beating rat heart.
Replacement parts grown in the lab may provide the best hope for
fulfilling the unmet demand for organ transplants.
More than 95,000 people in the United States are on waiting lists for
transplants. On average, one person dies every 90 minutes while
waiting for an organ.
Other alternatives to organ transplants have proved elusive.
Transplants from animals, for example, face serious risks of
rejection or viral infections. And mechanical organs, such as heart
pumps, have been only a temporary solution.
"If we want to live forever, we need to do better," said Gabor
Forgacs of the University of Missouri in Columbia.
Forgacs, a Hungarian-born biophysicist, directs the university's
bioprinting program. In his basement lab, he is using a gleaming
metal machine, a distant cousin of a computer printer, to build
living blood vessels.
He has succeeded in making vessels that branch the way real veins and
arteries do. He hopes to make replacement blood vessels that can be
used in surgery, then fabricate human tissues with fully functioning
blood systems that can be used to test new drugs. Ultimately, he
wants to build replacement organs in his lab.
"That's everybody's dream," Forgacs said.
`Real potential'
Tissue engineering, as Forgacs' field is called, is still very much
in its infancy, the National Science Foundation says.
Even so, it has attracted more than $3.5 billion in investments for
research, almost all from the private sector.
Because it relies on patients' cells, tissue engineering avoids the
ethical controversies surrounding embryonic stem cells and
therapeutic cloning.
Recent advances in growing human cells in the lab and in creating
artificial materials that are compatible with living tissue have
opened new possibilities for building organs.
But just like any infant, tissue engineering took some early tumbles.
Investors began pumping money into research and development in the
1990s. But the science had not advanced far enough. Some pioneering
tissue engineering companies sought bankruptcy protection.
"I think it was very much hyped in the 1990s," said Robert Nerem,
director of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and
Bioscience at Georgia Tech. "Timelines were unrealistic; companies
relied on investors with short time frames."
That first wave of tissue engineering did yield some useful products,
such as artificial skin grafts that are used to treat diabetic skin
ulcers. But many of the awe-inspiring breakthroughs that scientists
are talking about are still many years away, Nerem cautioned.
"The real potential for tissue engineering is the vital organs, but
we're a ways away from that, even though there's some exciting things
being done," Nerem said.
http://www.kansasci
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StemCells subscribers may also be interested in these sites:
Children's Neurobiological Solutions
http://www.CNSfoundation.org/
Cord Blood Registry
http://www.CordBlood.com/at.cgi?a=150123
The CNS Healing Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNS_Healing
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