A First: Organs Tailor-Made With Body’s Own Cells

NY Times ^ | September 15, 2012 | HENRY FOUNTAIN

[neverdem]

Andemariam Beyene sat by the hospital window, the low Arctic sun on his face, and talked about the time he thought he would die.

Two and a half years ago doctors in Iceland, where Mr. Beyene was studying to be an engineer, discovered a golf-ball-size tumor growing into his windpipe. Despite surgery and radiation, it kept growing. In the spring of 2011, when Mr. Beyene came to Sweden to see another doctor, he was practically out of options. “I was almost dead,” he said. “There was suffering. A lot of suffering.”

But the doctor, Paolo Macchiarini, at the Karolinska Institute here, had a radical idea. He wanted to make Mr. Beyene a new windpipe, out of plastic and his own cells.

Implanting such a “bioartificial” organ would be a first-of-its-kind procedure for the field of regenerative medicine, which for decades has been promising a future of ready-made replacement organs — livers, kidneys, even hearts — built in the laboratory.

For the most part that future has remained a science-fiction fantasy. Now, however, researchers like Dr. Macchiarini are building...

--snip--

Mr. Beyene’s doctors had one way to be certain that his windpipe was developing a blood vessel network. As part of their follow-up exam, they purposely injured the internal lining slightly.

“If it bleeds, it lives,” Dr. Macchiarini said.

Mr. Beyene’s windpipe bled.

A Quest Continues

Mr. Beyene hopes to return someday to Eritrea and work as a geothermal engineer. But for now he remains in Iceland, to be close to Stockholm for regular follow-up visits.

The windpipe contains only his own cells, so he does not need to take drugs to suppress his immune system to ward off rejection. But the synthetic scaffold, like any foreign material, caused the body to produce scar tissue, which had to be removed...

[Right Wing Assault]

Some libs are very angry that they didn’t have to kill a baby to get those cells.

[Bellflower]

Some libs are very angry that they didn’t have to kill a baby to get those cells.

But they often conveniently forget to inform the public that the stem cells that are used are adult stem cells. Under articles such as this you will often find comments about how horrible the religious right is wanting to stop stem cell research. They don't acknowledge that the left has thrown lots of money, time and resources down the immoral embryonic stem cell research rat hole, that could have done amazing wonders if spent on adult stem cell research. It's amazing that we have gotten as far as we have with the miracle of adult stem cell cures.