Organs from a test tube
What they already know how to grow
Julia Bondar, Copper News
Numerous references to sources can be found in the original article.
The opportunity to grow a human organ in a test tube and transplant it to a person in need of a transplant is a dream of transplant specialists. Scientists all over the world are working on this and have already learned how to make tissues, small working copies of organs, and we really have very little left before full-fledged spare eyes, lungs and kidneys. Copper News collected information about the most promising projects.
Lungs. Scientists from the University of Texas have grown human lungs in a bioreactor. However, without blood vessels, such lungs are not functional. However, a team of scientists from Columbia University Medical Center (Columbia University Medical Center, New York) recently for the first time in the world grew an ex vivo functional lung of a rat with a perfused and healthy vascular system.
Heart muscle tissue. Bioengineers from the University of Michigan managed to grow a piece of muscle tissue in a test tube. However, the heart from such a tissue will not be able to work fully yet, it is twice as weak as the original. However, so far this is the strongest sample of cardiac tissue.
Dice. The Israeli biotech company Bonus BioGroup used three-dimensional scans to create a gel-like skeleton of bone before seeding with stem cells taken from fat. The resulting bones were successfully transplanted to rodents. Experiments on growing human bones using the same technology are already being planned.
Stomach tissue. Scientists led by James Wells from the Children's Medical Clinical Center in Cincinnati (Ohio) managed to grow three-dimensional structures of the human stomach "in vitro" using embryonic stem cells and from adult pluripotent cells reprogrammed into stem cells. These structures were able to produce all the acids and digestive enzymes necessary for a person.
Japanese scientists have grown an eye in a Petri dish. The artificially grown eye contained the main layers of the retina: pigment epithelium, photoreceptors, ganglion cells and others. It is not yet possible to transplant it entirely, but tissue transplantation is a very promising direction. Embryonic stem cells were used as the starting material.
Scientists from Genentech Corporation have grown a prostate from a single cell. Molecular biologists from California managed to grow an entire organ from a single cell. Scientists have managed to find the only powerful stem cell in prostatic tissue that can grow into an entire organ. Such cells turned out to be slightly less than 1% of the total number. In the study, 97 mice were transplanted such a cell under the kidney, and 14 of them grew a full-fledged prostate capable of functioning normally. Biologists found exactly the same population of cells in the human prostate, however, in a concentration of only 0.2%.
Heart valves. Swiss scientists Dr. Simon Hoerstrup and Dorthe Schmidt from the University of Zurich were able to grow human heart valves using stem cells taken from amniotic fluid. Now doctors will be able to grow heart valves specifically for an unborn child if he has heart defects in the embryonic state.
The auricle. Using stem cells, scientists have grown a human ear on the back of a rat. The experiment was conducted by researchers from the University of Tokyo And Kyoto University (Kyoto University) under the leadership of Thomas Cervantes (Thomas Cervantes).
Skin. Scientists from the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and the University Children's Hospital of this city for the first time managed to grow human skin permeated with blood and lymphatic vessels in the laboratory. The resulting skin flap is able to almost completely perform the function of healthy skin in case of burns, surgical defects or skin diseases.
The pancreas. For the first time, scientists have created vascularized pancreatic islets capable of producing insulin. Another attempt to cure type I diabetes.
Kidneys. Scientists from the Australian University of Queensland have learned how to grow artificial kidneys from skin stem cells. So far, these are only small organoids 1 cm in size, but they are almost identical in structure and functioning to the kidneys of an adult.
Liver. Biologists from several countries have stated that they were able to grow a full-fledged analogue of the liver, capable of purifying the blood from toxins and performing other functions of this organ. To do this, scientists used stem cells and "blanks" from stem cells. These developments were carried out in parallel in Japan, America and Russia.
The bladder. A group of American scientists led by Anthony Atala has grown human bladders in the laboratory, completely ready for transplantation, from samples of patients' own tissues. The same scientists have grown urethra for patients whose urethra has been damaged.
In addition, scientists have already learned how to grow cartilage tissues, skeletal muscle and bone tissues, pituitary, thymus tissues, as well as tissues that function similarly to human brain tissues.
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07.09.2017