Dr. Atala
Posted on 04/03/2006 9:51:04 PM PDT by neverdem
Bladders created in the laboratory from a patient's own cells and then implanted in seven young people have achieved good long-term results in all of them, a team of researchers reported yesterday in a medical journal.
It takes about two months to grow the new bladder on a scaffold outside the body. After implantation, the engineered bladder enlarges over time in the recipient. The researchers say they expect that the new bladder will last a patient's lifetime, but the longevity will be known only as the children grow older.
The hope is that someday the experimental reconstruction procedure will be standard for larger numbers of patients, including adults, and for those with other kinds of bladder damage.
A major advantage of his technique is that rejection cannot occur because the cells used to create a new bladder are from the patient, not from another individual. So an ultimate aim — still years off — is to develop the technique to grow a wide variety of other tissues, possibly even organs, to help relieve the shortage of donor organs available for transplanting, said the research team's leader, Dr. Anthony Atala. He directs the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Dr. Atala's team's online report in the journal Lancet concerned seven teenagers or younger children who had birth defects that led to urinary leakage and incontinence.
Dr. Atala, a urologist, said in a telephone interview that he implanted the bladders in all seven patients at the Children's Hospital in Boston before he moved to Wake Forest in 2004. He said he began the research 16 years ago and implanted the first tissue-engineered bladder in 1999.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That's important.
I thought the Times provided more detail. Altman is a MD.
Truly amazing stuff!
Sax, a family physician and psychologist in Montgomery County, Md., is the author of "Boys Adrift: What's Really Behind the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys," to be published next year.
A Weed, a Fly, a Mouse and a Chain of Unintended Consequences
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Well don't fall off. Interesting.
I don't think my son has gotten around to reading that one yet. Is it available on X-box?
Dr. Atala
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