A First: Organs Tailor-Made With Body’s Own Cells
The New York Times | Henry Fountain
Stefan Zimmerman. At the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, rat hearts and lungs are washed of living cells to reveal the extracellular structure.
STOCKHOLM â€" 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.â€
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 â€" livers, kidneys, even hearts â€" built in the laboratory.
For the most part that future has remained a science-fiction fantasy. Now, however, researchers like Dr. Macchiarini are building organs with a different approach, using the body’s cells and letting the body itself do most of the work.
Read more
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
Stefan Zimmerman. At the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, rat hearts and lungs are washed of living cells to reveal the extracellular structure.
STOCKHOLM â€" 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.â€
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 â€" livers, kidneys, even hearts â€" built in the laboratory.
For the most part that future has remained a science-fiction fantasy. Now, however, researchers like Dr. Macchiarini are building organs with a different approach, using the body’s cells and letting the body itself do most of the work.
Read more
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
Comments
Post a Comment