Artificial liver: made in Russia
Russian scientists have reported on the creation of a bio-artificial liver
Copper news
Scientists of the Federal Scientific Center of Transplantology and Artificial Organs named after Academician V. I. Shumakov (FNC) for the first time in Russia created a bio-artificial liver based on cellular technologies and conducted its successful preclinical tests. This, according to ITAR-TASS, was announced by Murat Shagidulin, head of the Experimental Transplantology and Artificial Organs Department of the Center, speaking on September 3 at the First All-Russian Symposium "The Latest cellular technologies in Medicine" held in Novosibirsk Akademgorodok.
The methodology was developed by the FNC team under the leadership of the Director, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergey Gauthier.
The bioengineered organ was grown on the basis of a cell–free matrix - the biocark of the liver, from which all tissues were removed by special technology, and only the protein structures of blood vessels and other components of the organ were left. The matrix was populated with autologous (own) cultured bone marrow and liver cells. The resulting cellular engineering structure (CIC), being implanted into the liver parenchyma or mesentery of the small intestine, promotes tissue regeneration and full restoration of the function of the damaged liver, explained Shagidulin.
Preclinical trials of CFC were conducted on an animal model of acute or chronic liver failure. A year after CFC transplantation, not a single experimental animal died, while in the control group the mortality rate was 50 percent. At the same time, a week after the transplant, the biochemical parameters of liver function in the animals returned to normal.
"During morphological examination 90 days after transplantation of the CFC into the mesentery of the small intestine, we found viable hepatocytes (liver cells) and new vessels that sprouted through the matrix – the formation of a tissue–engineered structure began, that is, in fact, a "new liver" was regenerated," concluded Shagidulin.
According to the Federal Research Center, liver failure, the main cause of which is liver cirrhosis and viral hepatitis, ranks seventh among the causes of disability, and liver cirrhosis is the fourth cause of death for people over 40 years old.
Research in the field of creating such complex bioengineered organs as the liver, kidneys, lungs and heart has been conducted in recent years in leading scientific laboratories in the USA and Japan, but they have not yet progressed beyond the stage of studying on an animal model.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru04.09.2014