Shaping the Future of Medicine: Why You Should Care About Tissue Engineered Organs
Huffington Post-UK | Eleni Antoniadou, CEO Transplants Without Donors
A novel idea is incubating in biomedical labs: tissue engineered organs made from biomaterials and the patient's own stem cells. Such a concept may sound like science fiction when one considers the vast knowledge required to provide a functional substitute for one of nature's creations; however this immense scientific breakthrough is a reality. You might be thinking - are we one step closer to becoming an immortal species? Can we order our extra body parts and store them in banks in a case of emergency? Well, not just yet.
The scientific community is facing many limitations in developing artificial organs with complex functionalities such as the heart, lungs and kidneys but has made a remarkable progress in developing bio-artificial skin, nerves, arteries, noses, tracheas and many more. Yet again, limitations can be thought of as the mother of invention; it helps you create the impossible. In order to embrace the tangible and near term benefits of the artificial organ technology we need to ask ourselves: are we ready for this innovation?
Beneficiaries of regenerative medicine and artificial organ technology include patients in need of transplants, the increasingly ageing population, people with sports injuries, and war casualties. There is no doubt of the excessive need for the life-saving artificial organ technology and no price can be put on the improvement to the patient's life. However, there is not yet any legislative framework or any viable clinical therapeutic pathway in order to make artificial organs accessible to patients. Every day, hundreds of people die globally while waiting for an organ transplant and every 10 minutes a new patient is added to the waiting list. Britain is also heading to an unprecedented all-time high with the number of patients registered on the waiting lists escalating to more than 8,000, while thousands are ineligible for the list due to acute organ failure. It seems as though you have to be sick enough to be listed but well enough to survive the transplant. In addition, artificial organs have been successfully transplanted into patients but the European Medicine's Agency has yet to approve this technology as an alternative clinical approach and thus these few successful cases had to face significant bureaucratic obstacles to be implemented.
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______________________________________________________
"You have the power to SAVE lives."
To register as a donor in California:
www.donateLIFEcalifornia.org | www.doneVIDAcalifornia.org
Outside California:
www.organdonor.gov | www.donatelife.
A novel idea is incubating in biomedical labs: tissue engineered organs made from biomaterials and the patient's own stem cells. Such a concept may sound like science fiction when one considers the vast knowledge required to provide a functional substitute for one of nature's creations; however this immense scientific breakthrough is a reality. You might be thinking - are we one step closer to becoming an immortal species? Can we order our extra body parts and store them in banks in a case of emergency? Well, not just yet.
The scientific community is facing many limitations in developing artificial organs with complex functionalities such as the heart, lungs and kidneys but has made a remarkable progress in developing bio-artificial skin, nerves, arteries, noses, tracheas and many more. Yet again, limitations can be thought of as the mother of invention; it helps you create the impossible. In order to embrace the tangible and near term benefits of the artificial organ technology we need to ask ourselves: are we ready for this innovation?
Beneficiaries of regenerative medicine and artificial organ technology include patients in need of transplants, the increasingly ageing population, people with sports injuries, and war casualties. There is no doubt of the excessive need for the life-saving artificial organ technology and no price can be put on the improvement to the patient's life. However, there is not yet any legislative framework or any viable clinical therapeutic pathway in order to make artificial organs accessible to patients. Every day, hundreds of people die globally while waiting for an organ transplant and every 10 minutes a new patient is added to the waiting list. Britain is also heading to an unprecedented all-time high with the number of patients registered on the waiting lists escalating to more than 8,000, while thousands are ineligible for the list due to acute organ failure. It seems as though you have to be sick enough to be listed but well enough to survive the transplant. In addition, artificial organs have been successfully transplanted into patients but the European Medicine's Agency has yet to approve this technology as an alternative clinical approach and thus these few successful cases had to face significant bureaucratic obstacles to be implemented.
Continue reading
______________________________________________________
"You have the power to SAVE lives."
To register as a donor in California:
www.donateLIFEcalifornia.org | www.doneVIDAcalifornia.org
Outside California:
www.organdonor.gov | www.donatelife.
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