Own kidney on a pig carcass
Artificial kidney will be grown from the patient's own cells
In the future, the patient's own cells will be seeded into the frame.
Experts in regenerative medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, North Carolina, USA, have reached the first important milestone in the creation of an artificial kidney, which in the future will help solve the problem of a shortage of donor organs. (The original message can be read on the website of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center: Lab-Engineered Kidney Project Reaches Early Milestone – VM.) The results of this work are published on the website of the journal Annals of Surgery (Orlando et al., Production and Implantation of Renal Extracellular Matrix Scaffolds From Porcine Kidney as a Platform for Renal Bioengineering Investigations – VM.).
A group of scientists has successfully constructed a "scaffolding" or frame for a future artificial kidney, using pig kidneys as the basis. The main idea was to remove all the animal cells from the pig kidney using a special detergent, leaving only its "skeleton". This framework will subsequently be seeded with the patient's own cells, from which an organ will grow that does not cause a rejection reaction.
"It is extremely important to look for new resources to obtain organs for transplantation due to the acute shortage of donors," says the author of the study, surgeon Giuseppe Orlando. "The artificial kidney skeletons we have created completely preserve their structure and circulatory system and represent an ideal basic platform for creating a full–fledged artificial organ, individual for each patient." As a test, artificial kidney skeletons were implanted in laboratory animals and made sure that the kidneys were fully filled with blood and were able to maintain normal blood pressure. This proves that the removal of cells from the kidneys does not affect the mechanical work of blood vessels.
"We still have many obstacles to overcome before artificial kidneys enter transplantology," says Anthony Atala, co-author of the study. – For example, we are facing an acute problem of the formation of blood clots and blood clots inside blood vessels. In addition, the kidneys are a very complex organ with 22 different types of cells." However, scientists are confident that the patient's cells transplanted onto the artificial kidney frame will recognize it by chemical signals and begin to grow properly. The developments of American surgeons are extremely important for 90 thousand Americans waiting for kidney transplantation. According to statistics, the chance of receiving a donor organ after 5 years on the waiting list does not exceed 35 percent.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru26.06.2012