Researchers Hope To Grow Human Ears From Fat Tissue 35
Zothecula writes "Researchers at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital aim to grow a human ear via stem cells taken from a patient's fat tissue. Relatively little attention has been given to the reconstruction of damaged cartilage around the cranial area, however the new method is hoped to modernize this area of reconstructive surgery."
So no more... (Score:1)
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Like the mice, they are growing tissue in an ear-shaped mold/structure. Not nearly so impressive as the headline makes it sound.
Wait, I thought this was all solved (Score:1)
I have found my calling in life.... (Score:1)
Bringing hearing to millions!
Rimshot (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Rimshot - What Happens in Fight Club... (Score:1)
Why not go whole hog and make pancreatic cells? (Score:4, Interesting)
I do not mean to take away from anything, but I would sure love to see research like this directed to problems that affect the lifestyles of a large number of people.
I know they are working on it, but personally, I would like to see them throw all they've got at these pesky insulin and maintenance drug problems where just a little chemical injection by a tailored cell assembly would do the trick. Forcing patients to be tethered to the pharmacist with little bottles of pills has got to go.
Re:Why not go whole hog and make pancreatic cells? (Score:5, Insightful)
problem is that a condition that requires maintenance med is already considered "solved", and approximately $0 will be spent on finding a "one time" solution. the maintenance situation is the golden goose - people will pay for drugs every month for the rest of their lives!! mega benjamins!
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And keep that poor guy condemned to live out the rest of his life with a syringe in his arm...
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I have a real tender spot in me that gets quite worked up when I see the cold hard realities of economics butt up against what I consider pure human compassion.
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at the very least there's a driver for finding cures when there's profit to be had.
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There are people who think that HIV was made by the government, there are people who think that cancer could have been cured if researchers cared more or weren't so focused on keeping people on expensive meds.
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You're just crazy, right? Literally billions of dollars are spent on diabetes research. Work on the artificial pancreas, an implantable long term glucose sensor, oral insulin and a host of other technologies has quite a bit of money behind it.
Stop with the whiny 'it's all money' handwringing. It's only mostly money. There is also hookers and blow.
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A lot of the barriers to better treatments for diseases aren't financial. For example, at any given time there are only a limited # of people willing and able to participate in clinical trials. Do your friends volunteer for these trials? Have you?(You don't have to actually suffer from the ailment to participate in phase I trials) There are also limitations to the # of r
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"Insulin production is down" is misleading. Most type 2 diabetes is based on insulin resistance: *Type 1* diabetes, though is mostly an auto-immune problem that destroys all beta cells, and that can benefit from transplants *if the auto-immune problem is addressed*. It has never been addressed properly, so none of the transplant procedures have worked out for Type 1.
In fact, according to Dr. Faustmann's work at MGH, if you address the auto-immune problem with correctly applied BCG vaccine and tight blood su
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Simply regrowing the pancreas won't fix things. Replacing the pancreas would just tether them to worse bottles of pills (immunosuppressives) to prevent them from getting trashed again by their immune system.
Unless we figure out some one-shot "stop attacking the pancreas" switch, they'll be on medication of some kind for their entire lives.
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First of all, the money spent on this research is going to be a drop in the bucket compared to diabetics related research.
Second, we need to walk before we can run. Medicine is no where near the state where we can just implant an artificial pancreas into a patient. It's one thing to build a simple structure like ear shaped cartilage, but there are all sorts of issues building a multiple hormone and enzyme producing organ that has to interface with multiple body systems (endocrine, exocr
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Ears are an easy target because their function mainly comes from their shape; you could make them out of wood and they'd still do a semi-decent job. The problems being tackled here are making the right shape (presumably with a scaffold), getting the host body to maintain it (ie. hooking up the blood supply) and preventing rejection (by using the host's own stem cells).
On the other hand, making tissue that reliably synthesises vital chemicals, in the right quantities, is much more difficult. Thankfully, solv
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You mean like the WHO saying people should consume no more than 10 percent of their calories in sugar - which is why people become diabetic in the first place? ...
Never happen. You want cures for things you're going to keep doing.
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Because Mike Tyson didn't take a bite out of Evander's pancreas.
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I think you're doing it wrong.
Pinnas not ears (Score:2)
It's not the whole ear they are trying to grow but rather the pinna. The ear is the entire organ which includes all the structures of the inner ear, middle ear and outer ear. The pinna is the visible part of the ear.
In other news.... (Score:2)
Ahhhh, the circle of life!
Sound (Score:2)
I never knew there was such a high (Score:1)
demand for human ears.