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Science

Scientists Grow Human Thymus From Stem Cells 307

Posted by timothy from the vote-for-the-next-organ-to-grow dept.
knight_23 writes: "The Herald Sun reports that Australian researchers have grown a functioning thymus from stem cells. The thymus is a small organ that is critical to the immune system. Human trials could begin within two years."
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Scientists Grow Human Thymus From Stem Cells More

Scientists Grow Human Thymus From Stem Cells

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  • Cool (Score:2, Funny)

    by tsa ( 15680 )
    Cool! Maybe I'll live long enough to get my own new heart!

  • Isn't this... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by RoundTop-VJAS ( 580788 )
    one of the parts that is affected by HIV? also, if this can be done..think of all those "bubble boys" that have reduced immune systems. This could be a VERY good thing.

  • yes, but... (Score:4, Funny)

    by TweeKinDaBahx ( 583007 ) <.tweek. .at. .nmt.edu.> on Monday June 17, 2002 @03:41PM (#3717320) Homepage Journal
    Will that new liver/lungs I wanted for christmas be plug and play compliant?
    • Sorry, one thing that will never change is that plug and play will allways be plug and pray :)
    • No, but with a few of these in vitro-grown thymuses (thymii?) implanted in your body, you'll develop a Wolverine-like super immune system and live to be a bitter, violent 150-year old amnesiac super hero.
  • it's sad.... all the resrictions imposed upon advancements of science are a result of conseratives fearful of playing god, the uneducated massess control the politicians with their ideas, or lack of rather. a preist says it's wrong, they say it's wrong, politicians say it's wrong, so it is wrong, right? wrong! i'm for any medical advancement that saves the lives of people, but i guess my $0.02 is worth the same as the twits i disagree with...
    • Unfortunately its not the ignorant people, but more than anything a religious stand point against this. I am all for control, but not for denying the technology to advance, because at the end the only ones hurting themselves is us, for technology always shines through no matter what/who.
      dam()

    • I dissagree with you. I am by no means against technology (after all why would I read slashdot all of the time?) but that doesn't mean that I believe that we humans should dive into every technology that we develop.

      The problem with technology and humans is that humans have a knack for doing more harm with a technology than good. To say that genetic engineering is only good is being very ignorant of humans' knack for doing harm. Don't get me wrong, not everybody is going to use these technologies for evil, but all it takes is another Hitler (who did plenty of expirements with genetics himself) to come along and figure out how to use genetic engineering to control many people.

      Bill Joy (the chief computer scientist at Sun Microsystems) wrote an article in Wired Magazine that opened my eyes to the dangers of tecnology. I believe that every person who believes that genetic engineering is good (which it is in some cases, such as saving lives) should read this article. It can be found here. [wired.com]

    • Introducing killer bees and African Lady Bugs were also in the name of science. Just $0.02 from the other side of the coin.
  • Grow John Bobbitt a replacement penis?
    • Maybe medical technology will progress to the point where the spam mail and web pop-ups relating to "Ancient Sudanese Techniques" to "enhance your masculinity" will actually no longer be spam, merely factual advertisment.
    • Grow John Bobbitt a replacement penis?

      Okay, I'll bite. (Actually, I don't bite.)

      Forget about replacements. How about spares? Or extras? You know, redundancy. Or maybe just additional size?

      Or maybe now all those SPAM messages will come true!
  • This is truly amazing. I don't understand how people can be so against a technology which is so obviously going to save many many lives. Perhaps the pro-life anti-stem cell people should be the ones we call baby killers, as without these new technologies so many lives will be lost. A new Thymus! Who'd of thunk?
    • The US could drop some nukes on afghanistan and save US lives by obliterating every last afghan, but people are against it... Why? Because it comes at a tremendous cost.

      We must proceed with caution with such powerful technology as cloing and stem cell projects.

      It's not necessary to allow companies to harvest babies for stem-cells when they're doing fine with what they've got. If we don't put limitations on people they'll abuse their power. It's human nature.
  • Can anyone explain why this is? In my basic understanding of the immune system, I thought the body needed T-cells to hunt down and bind themselves to unwanted invaders so that macrophages could gobble them up. Does our body contain a set amount of T-cells for a lifetime? Or is there some other process that creates them?
    • basically, there are T cells and B cells (i won't even get into the Mr. T-cells in this post-- though i've mentioned them in another post). the precursors for these are made very early in life, either in the fetal liver or yolk sac, or later in bone marrow.

      these precursors differentiate, or "grow up" in the thymus. basically, they're "taught" how to work. hmn. i just re-read your post. i'll cut to the chase:

      tons and tons of each type of cell precursor are made. the typical lifespan of T-cells is thought to be in the period of months to years. "memory" T cells, in particular, are thought to have very long lifespans in the range of "many" years.

      it is important to note that production of precursors does _not_ halt: they are constantly produced in the bone marrow. also, the thymus doesn't poof entirely-- it maintains function, though it shrinks tremendously in size as we get older.
    • Your understanding of T cells is correct. However, T cells mature from the basic stem cell in the thymus during childhood. Without a thymus (or a dysfunctional thymus), the body will not have any fully-functional T cells. This results in a vulnerability to devastating viral infections that you or I would fight off in about a week.

      Krishna

  • This process is probably a lot quicker that cloning myself and waiting for my other self to grow old enough for it to become an organ doner.

  • Little FYI on the THY: (Score:5, Informative)

    by damu ( 575189 ) on Monday June 17, 2002 @03:43PM (#3717344) Journal
    The functions of the thymus were not well understood until the early 1960s, when its role in the development of the body's system of immunity was discovered. Beginning during fetal development, the thymus processes many of the body's lymphocytes, which migrate throughout the body via the bloodstream, seeding lymph nodes and other lymphatic tissue. The main cells undergoing this processing are the T cells, a heterogeneous groups of cells essential in protecting the body against invasions by foreign organisms. If the thymus fails to develop or is removed early in fetal life, the immune system cannot develop completely. Normally, by the time the infant is a few months old, the immune system has sufficiently formed so as to function throughout life. However, further growth and development of lymphoid tissue still depends on intervention by the thymic cells. After the initial seeding process, the thymus releases a hormonal substance that stimulates further growth of lymphoidal tissue, although such a substance has not yet been isolated.
    dam()
    • The thymus is only really necessary for the maturation of T cells which takes place in early life. T cells are actually continuously produced by stem cells in the bone marrow. Once mature, T cells generally reside in the peripheral blood and in lymph nodes. While the thymus does secrete cytokines that promote lymphoid proliferation, there are other organs/tissue types like lymph nodes and bone marrow that can also supply the necessary substances.
    • I've read other research which seems to suggest that many peoples' allergic reactions are due to an immature immune system (possibly due to an "overly-sterile" environment while growing up which doesn't challenge the immune system enough to make it mature). Perhaps the thymus is "going into hibernation" in many allergy sufferers before it has fully matured the proper T-cells? If so, would it be possible to "fix up" our malfunctioning immune system by temporarily reactiving the function of our thymus?
  • Try stem cells.

  • Umbilical Stem Cells (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Yoda2 ( 522522 ) on Monday June 17, 2002 @03:45PM (#3717360)
    It is too bad that more hospitals aren't allowing the donation of umbilical stem cells (stem cells collected from cord blood). They are largely an untapped resource and are usually considered PC even in the most conservative camps.

    • Re:Umbilical Stem Cells (Score:4, Insightful)

      by lobsterGun ( 415085 ) on Monday June 17, 2002 @04:16PM (#3717618)
      Even though the hospital may not support fetal stem cell donation, that does not stop you from banking the cells yourself. There are commercial services that will bank these cells for you for a resasonable fee. ViaCord [viacord.com] and CBR [cordblood.com] are two such services.

      I chose CBR for my son. I pray that he never needs the cells, but if he does, they will be there.
  • I think I misplaced mine! I hope they don't take too long to grow because I'm really starting to miss it, and my friends are making fun of me.
  • How much cash do you think they would pay to let them grow a couple test thymus' in me?

  • Best quote... of DEATH! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Monday June 17, 2002 @03:45PM (#3717363) Journal
    "Without a functioning immune system you get a disease called death," he said.
    This sounds like one of those quotes from sensationalistic sci-fi pulp novels... "He found himself in a world of mayhem... and death!"

    Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. I just hope we don't end up with giant killer thymuses (thymi? nah) rampaging through downtown Cleveland. Again.

    • wow, the guy that said that is the same guy that grew the thymus? I would think he would know that death is a condition, a state of being, not a disease. Though I can see how he was trying to be humorous (I sure hope).
      • Wouldn't death technically be a syndrome?

        The difference between a syndrome and a disease is that a disease is a health condition with a clearly identifiable cause while a syndrome is a set of symptoms which define the health condition without a single cause on which to place the blame. Thus a cold is a disease because a viral infection can be identified as the cause.

      • wow, the guy that said that is the same guy that grew the thymus? I would think he would know that death is a condition, a state of being, not a disease.

        Wouldn't it be more correct to define death as a state of non-being rather than a state of being?
    • I was a little disappointed by this and other quotes, which are kind of humorous but also sound somewhat more like marketing-speak than the statements of a dedicated scientist at the cusp of serious medical and ethical issues. "Going weak in the knees", "disease called death", "fountain of youth", "missing link/final piece"... these are all rather flamboyant statements, and in some cases rather hard to substantiate. What has been achieved does sound very impressive, but the article leaves me wondering about whether there is a lot of hype in this case for the purpose of obtaining further funding, getting lucrative contracts, or perhaps even self-gratification?

    • (thymi? nah)

      We-eelll... it comes from a latin word, theoretically, so thymi is the "proper" plural. On the other hand, that word is from a greek adjective, "thymos." So who the hell knows.

      (dork dork dork, aiee)

      • Not all Latin words ending in "-us" have a plural of "-i"; for some the nominative plural is "-us" (long "u"). And "thymus" comes from the Greek, not Latin anyway. For "virus" and "thymus", "viruses" and "thymuses" are the only acceptable plurals in English anyway.

        If you start attaching Latin plurals to English words, you better be prepared to use the cases correctly, as in: "Less than a century ago, scientists discovered the viros. And per viris, they will be able to perform gene therapy. The genomes virorum are generally small and easily manipulated." Let's just stick with the English endings, OK?

  • "Professor Boyd referred to the thymus as the fountain of youth."

    So does this mean that within a few more studies of stem cell research we can make ourselves immortal? If theres a way we cant get sick and everything by enhancing stem cells and cloning them..then isnt there a way we can use stem cells to slow down the aging process or something like that.....

    gimme some of that Thymus magical juice...bottoms up!! Ahhhh.....Thymus the immortal maker! (cheesy smile and hearty laugh...knowing i'm not going to get paid for advertising somethin that wont exist....or will it?)

  • What next? (Score:3, Funny)

    by pc_plod ( 577081 ) on Monday June 17, 2002 @03:46PM (#3717387)
    Come back and tell me when they can grow a Shakey's Pizza

  • Wrong focus? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Monday June 17, 2002 @03:48PM (#3717406) Journal
    It seems that the Herald Sun's article is focusing on how great the thymus is, and all the nifty things it can do -- when the real breakthrough is the fact that they GREW A FRICKIN' FUNCTIONING ORGAN FROM STEM CELLS. Jesus Christ! Move this tech over to the heart, liver, kidneys, whatever, and NOW you've got the "holy grail of immunology". Yeah, I realize it's a lot of work to do something like this, and requires specialized effort and development for different organs, but if the basic technology works... ay caramba.

    Maybe I'm missing something, and this isn't as big a deal as I think it is... but if it is...
    • They've already grown and transplanted functioning bladders to. The reason why this is less exciting then one would expect is that these organs are of a relatively simple structure: either just a big bag, or a clump of similar cells. Making them was just a process of either inducing them to divide correctly, or in the case of the bladder, growing it on a simple lattice. That's nothing like what it would take to make the cells form a functioning heart, or a lung, or a liver.
    • Move this tech over to the heart, liver, kidneys, whatever, and NOW you've got the "holy grail of immunology"

      Leave it to a software guy to claim the fix of the problem is to upgrade the hardware underneath! :) What a kludge this "human" software must be... (I'm not even going to mention the security concerns with all its open ports!)

  • Slashdotted! (Score:1, Redundant)

    by billstr78 ( 535271 )

    IN a world first, Melbourne scientists have successfully grown an organ from stem cells.

    A team from Monash Medical School grew a functioning thymus, a small organ that is critical to the immune system. Human trials could begin within two years.
    Stem cells are the body's building blocks and have unlimited capacity to grow and replace all the cells within a particular tissue or organ.

    "When I realised what we had finally done after 15 years of research, I went weak at the knees," Professor Richard Boyd said.

    He said understanding the thymus, located near the heart, was the holy grail of immunology.

    Professor Boyd believes the discovery will be an important part of a cure for many diseases of the immune system such as cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and diabetes. It should also help prevent rejection in people who have an organ transplant.

    Professor Boyd referred to the thymus as the fountain of youth.

    "Without a functioning immune system you get a disease called death,"he said.

    "This organ, along with bone marrow, is the engine room of the immune system.

    "It is the key to good health because without it, the body has no protection against any viruses."

    Professor Boyd said despite its importance for immunity, the thymus went into hibernation naturally once humans reach puberty.

    "This may be why many auto-immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and cancers and infections increase in adults."

    Professor Boyd said his team, led by Dr Jason Gill, was working on rebuilding the immune system by "rebooting" the thymus into action.

    The Monash scientists put thymus stem cells into the kidney cavity of a mouse.

    "To see the thymus grow, complete and working, was exciting," Professor Boyd said.

    "We were looking at the missing link, that final piece of the jigsaw."

    Professor Boyd said the mouse immune system was similar to a human's.

    "The clinical trials indicate that the human thymus responds in the same way as a mouse, which is why we are confident this will translate very easily to humans," he said.

    The thymus produces, educates and distributes special white cells called T lymphocytes (T-cells) which help to controlthe immune system and fight infection.

    But T-cells are destroyed when cancer patients undergo chemotherapy and also by the AIDS virus. The cellsare also suppressed in people who have had organ transplants.

    There has been limited success with thymus transplants, which are usually rejected by recipients. Stem cell therapy may offer a more reliable alternative.

    Professor Boyd said he was confident the transition from animal to human clinical trials would be quick - "because it has to be".

    He said the discovery fits "beautifully" with the global picture of Melbourne as a world leader in stem cell research.

    "This really is a Melbourne story. It was created by Melbourne scientists and its international commercial capabilities are being explored by Norwood Abbey, a Melbourne-based biotechnology company that has exclusive rights to the science."

    Professor Boyd said the international science journal Nature Immunology would publish details of the research today.
  • From science fiction, the impression I always got was that the way handle the failure of a heart was either going to be transplant from a donor or the use of synthetic organs (e.g. artificial hearts). This seems like a more impressive technology, allowing the body to grow its own replacement, and a more natural one, by eliminating the risk of rejection of artificial substances or organs grown in a different body.

    I did find some of the quotes from Professor Boyd somewhat melodramatic, though: "Without a functioning immune system you get a disease called death,"he said.

    Still, an amazing discovery. Good luck to those doing cutting edge medical research.

  • politcal debate (Score:2, Insightful)

    by redtoade ( 51167 )
    Before we get 100 posts telling us that stem cell research is being held up by whacko Chrisitian right wing bible thumpers...

    May I remind you that there are hundreds of Sci-Fi stories (books, TV, movies, etc...) debating the creation of an UNDERCLASS! Whether this be robots, animals, races or CLONES!!!

    Space - Above and Beyond (FOX TV) "Tanks," human clones and "AIs"
    Star Trek TNG: Data/Lor. And those stupid mouse looking robots that could synthesis their own tools.
    Asimov I, Robot: self-explanatory
    Max Headroom: body harvesters
    Brave New World: alphas.

    Any others? Feel free to add a few if you can think of them... I don't have time (I'm at work) to list all of the ones that I can think of, so please help out.

    Anyway, I hate the idea of stem cell research. And I'm a self-proclaimed atheist. It's only a matter of time before somebody connects "test tube baby" technology with "cloning" technologies and grows their own stem cells from human fetuses.

    Isn't this the creation of an underclass of humans whos purpose it is to serve the higher classes?

    • Re:politcal debate (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Monday June 17, 2002 @03:55PM (#3717453)
      So because you saw on TV a show where clones where treated as slaves we shouldn't grow new livers for people who are going to die without one?

      The hell?

    • Re:politcal debate (Score:2, Insightful)

      by SirKodiak ( 585894 )
      Isn't this the creation of an underclass of humans whos purpose it is to serve the higher classes?
      That's the issue of how the stem cells are procured. As mentioned in this comment [slashdot.org] there is a method of getting stem cells that doesn't rely on creating a brave-new-world style underclass.

      Simply creating new organs in existing human beings (or mice) in no way creates an underclass.

      It seems like the solution is not to outlaw stem cell research, but to ensure that procuring stem cells is done in an ethical manner. Differing opinions on what constitutes an ethical manner is what makes this such a sensitive subject.

    • Re:politcal debate (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gilroy ( 155262 )
      Blockquoth the poster:

      Isn't this the creation of an underclass of humans whos purpose it is to serve the higher classes?

      There's no reason it has to be. The beuaty of stem cell use is exactly that you can induce particular organs without having to grow the whole organism. That is, we decant a thymus from the vat instead of cloning and growing a whole new human (a la Parts: The Clonus Horror [imdb.com] -- I shudder as much at the movie quality as the idea!).


      So this is actually much less class-warfare-ish than straight cloning-and-harvesting. The real ethical hangup seems to lie in the source of stem cells... the best grade appears to be embryonic, which naturally raises red flags with a large number of people.

    • Why in the world would anyone go all the expense and bother of cloning to create an underclass when normal reproduction works just fine? In case you didn't know, slavery is alive and well still. Women and children are bought and sold in many countries. People willing to enslave others do not care where they get their slaves.

      Clones do no pop out of vats as fully formed adults ready for the factory or prostitution. Clones need to be implanted in wombs, carried to full term, nursed, fed, educated, and raised just like any other child. You cannot tell by looking at a person that they are cloned. Cloning will not be an economically feasible way of enslaving anyone for a long, long time.

      The problem with human cloning is that there is evidence that clones are 'born old'. That clones will age faster, and may suffer from ofther defects. Creating a human clone would involve hundreds of failures which isn't ethically acceptable to myself.

      And, this article was about growing organs from stem cells - not cloning.

  • Mr. T-cells. (Score:5, Funny)

    by herrd0kt0r ( 585718 ) on Monday June 17, 2002 @03:50PM (#3717423)
    quote:
    "The thymus produces, educates and distributes special white cells called T lymphocytes (T-cells) which help to control the immune system and fight infection.

    But T-cells are destroyed when cancer patients undergo chemotherapy and also by the AIDS virus. The cells are also suppressed in people who have had organ transplants."

    this is a significant problem that is one of the biggest factors leading to disease in immunocompromised patients. the reason why they're also suppressed in patients with organ transplants is that they require immunosuppresant therapy, so that they own body doesn't reject the donor organ.

    in a nutshell, your body doesn't like non-self things. if there's a non-self thing in your system, say, someone else's liver, your immune system will flip out and demonstrate Real Ultimate Power.

    what's needed is some sort of component that can be introduced into the body that can aid the immune system intelligently. something that resists destruction by chemotherapy, and something that is "smart" enough to know what to attack, and what to leave alone. T-cells don't do this.

    nanotechnology offers this. i know it's going to be years from now, but i hope that scientists will be able to shrink Mr. T into an injectable form. These Mr. T-cells will seek out and berate questionable cells and foreign bodies and beat them down, if necessary.

    some genetic work may be needed to strengthen its intelligence such that the Mr. T-cells don't kill everything in sight.

    "what's all this jibba-jabba bout chemo?"
    "i pity the immune system who ain't got no T."
    • If memory serves, part of the job of the thymus is to eradicate lines of T cells that react against the body's own tissue. In which case, we could imagine an artificial thymus saying "Ok, boys, here's what the transplant looks like. Everybody who wants to destroy it, die without descendants now".
      • Or, you could just take some stem cells from your fat (fat's full of stem cells) and grow the requisite organ(s) so that you no longer need any immunosuppresants or have any worries about rejection.

        Wouldn't that just be much simpler and cheaper?
  • if they were using adult or embryonic stem cells? I would assume that they used embryonic as adult stem cells might just bond with the cells but it doesn't say anyting in the article. This is great news though, hopefully it will get objecters to see the huge benifits to stem cell research.
  • Some EntWives for TreeBeard !
  • God is suing them, claiming they are copyrighting his derivative works, citing the DMCA. (deity Millenium Copyright act)
  • I can get this system to grow me a new steak whenever I want. Mm-mm - fresh biotech in the oven!

    (Yes, I know it probably wouldn't taste as good as range grown cow, thank you Mr/Ms. "I don't get sarcasm".)
  • It is definitely a greate advance in the biological science. But it will take at least 5-10 years to make it practically useful. And all the claims about prospectives sound like a story about a PhD student who wanted to prove the applicability of his puerly theoretical thesis on descrete maths: -The present thesis is on descrete maths. Descrete maths is applied in synthesis of conatat element schemes. The latter are a model of relay circuits. And relays are used in various agricaltural machines, which are of a great use.
  • Think of the commercal uses, Pineal gland extract sales to Vegas Gamblers and cheap pure adrenochrome. man, just think now we don't have to kill people just for some. **** [cornboy.com]
  • I don't know about this. The immune system is a complicated beast. It involves tens of organs, hundreds of enzymes, and thousands of cells, all acting in harmony to maintain the health of the whole. You can't just throw thymuses at the problem and expect it to go away. We need to look for a more holistic solution, attacking the root problem rather than patching the symptoms.
  • Hmm. Does this mean that in 2004 they'll put the thymus inside someone to see if it works, or that in 2004 they'll start trying to grow a whole human?

  • Misplaced modifier? (Score:3, Funny)

    by doorbot.com ( 184378 ) on Monday June 17, 2002 @04:25PM (#3717695) Journal
    The thymus is a small organ that is critical to the immune system. Human trials could begin within two years.

    Human trials of what? An immune system? So the un-authorized trials of billions of people over the last hundred thousand years are invalid (pun intended)?

    In any case, I definitely agree; this "immune system" scientists have been proposing definitely needs more clinical research before we can allow one to be used on real people.

    By the way, exactly who owns the patent on it?
  • until they can grow my wife larger breasts.
  • There is no role for the thymus in the adult human. I wonder who they are going to do trials in - DiGeorge patients (22q11 deletion - often athymic). I can't imagine many parents allowing someone to install a new thymus in their kid...but I guess some people are desperate. I doubt that this will work at all.
  • What I wish the article had discussed is how thymic transplants would actually help in treating HIV infection or in preventing transplant rejection.

    Since T cells are initially generated in the bone marrow, a new thymus wouldn't have much of an effect with increasing T cell populations. Furthermore, even if you could somehow boost T cell numbers, what's to prevent the virus from infecting these new cells?

    With organ transplantation, reject happens most rapidly when HLA haplotypes between donor and recipient aren't perfectly matched, and a new thymus wouldn't really do much to solve this mismatch.

    On the other hand, I can easily see how this new development can help children with SCIDs or congenital thymic hypoplasia/aplasia.

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