Lab-grown Kidneys Transplanted Into Rats 55
ananyo writes with this bit about lab grown organs from Nature: "Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have fitted rats with kidneys that were grown in a lab from stripped-down kidney scaffolds. When transplanted, these 'bioengineered' organs starting filtering the rodents' blood and making urine. The team, led by organ-regeneration specialist Harald Ott, started with the kidneys of recently deceased rats and used detergent to strip away the cells, leaving behind the underlying scaffold of connective tissues such as the structural components of blood vessels. They then regenerated the organ by seeding this scaffold with two cell types: human umbilical-vein cells to line the blood vessels, and kidney cells from newborn rats to produce the other tissues that make up the organ (paper)."
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What we need is a bigger penis.
There, fixed that for you.
You don't need scientists to insert your penis into a rat
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By the way: this technique may be cross-organ applicable.
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I, for one, wonder when rats became our new overlords. How come they can get new kidneys, be cured of baldness and diabetes, cloned, have intelligence and memory increased, etc.. When can I do to get this preferential treatment?
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s/When/What (stupid autocompletion)
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Re:Fuck kidney (Score:5, Insightful)
So yeah, take care of your liver.
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This would seem to imply to me that it would not be impossibly difficult to grow a new liver in a lab. All you have to do is hook into the self-regeneration properties and take advantage of them.
Re: Fuck kidney (Score:4, Informative)
You don't need a lab. You can take half of someone's liver, put it in someone else, and both will grow and function.
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But then have to deal with the rejection problems in the recipient. The promise of lab-grown ones is that you strip the donor's cells leaving only the scaffold thereby removing anything they would reject and seed it with the patient's own cells which they won't reject.
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"So yeah, take care of your liver.
if the regen was worth a damn I wouldn't have to.
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Structurally, the liver is not that complex, and -- as previously mentioned -- has amazing regenerative capacity.
Physiologically and biochemically, yes, individual hepatocytes have a phenomenal array of activities and functions. However, once you get hepatocytes developing in the liver scaffold, the fact that each of them is a marvel of biology is a moot point.
The liver's function is currently not something we can reproduce, but developing tech to regrow compatible livers en toto would solve the problem wi
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As someone with a kidney disease, let me note my dissent.
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The price of bacon may also go down, win win.
Not for the pig.
Re:Bacon. (Score:4, Funny)
The price of bacon may also go down, win win.
Not for the pig.
Yeah, well, the pig should've thought about that before deciding to taste so damn delicious.
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I watched a BBC documentary this past year, the host of which sought to find out what "long-pig" tastes like. He went to a doctor and had his leg biopsied, then cooked the biopsy. However, he said he couldn't eat it due to UK law, so he took it to a lab, which placed the sample in a GCMS and told him what it would it taste like: a combination of mostly pork, plus poultry and lamb, if I remember correctly. I have little doubt he was willing to eat it, though, as this bloke drank his own piss during the same
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I watched a BBC documentary this past year
Let me guess - BBC Three?
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I watched a BBC documentary this past year
Let me guess - BBC Three?
I'm sorry, I can't recall... I'm in NYS, and I get TV shows via BitTorrent. Thank you for the tip though; I'll keep an eye out for BBC Three's watermark if I happen to be eating. ;o)
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I watched a BBC documentary this past year, the host of which sought to find out what "long-pig" tastes like. He went to a doctor and had his leg biopsied, then cooked the biopsy. However, he said he couldn't eat it due to UK law, so he took it to a lab, which placed the sample in a GCMS and told him what it would it taste like: a combination of mostly pork, plus poultry and lamb, if I remember correctly. I have little doubt he was willing to eat it, though, as this bloke drank his own piss during the same series.
He is an actor? It should taste like ham,
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Only if you decide to put the meat into a pig. Why not grow bacon without a pig around it?
What no blanket?
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Indeed. There's already been some impressive research into using the intercellular matrix from pig intestine as a healing scaffold - the most dramatic case that I remember was a while back seeing a picture of a foot of someone with a diabetic ulcer that had eaten away a couple toes back partway through the arch. No established medical technique had been able to heal the wound, and I think amputation of the entire foot was beginning to be seriously considered. Then they slapped a sheet of i.i.c. matrix ov
Recycling (Score:2)
started with the kidneys of recently deceased rats
replace rats with humans and as George Carlin said on using dead people as fertilizer, "you want recycling? lets get serious"
Re:Recycling (Score:4, Funny)
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biological DRM
Wouldn't that be BRM? Although "bio-digital" (biogital?, bigital?) sounds awesome. Not the RM part though.
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Happen as mebbe, lad. [wikipedia.org]
Lab-grown Kidneys Transplanted Into Rats (Score:2)
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Finally (Score:1)
'... and kidney cells from newborn rats to produce the other tissues that make up the organ.'
Finally, a good reason to have children.
Mass General (Score:2)
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coming up next (Score:2)
Lab grown artificial heart,liver,brain,hand,foot,ear,eye etc. Human augmentics FTW no more organ harvesters.
Re: coming up next (Score:2)
Well that'll be a huge jump - the big discovery in this work is that the intercellular matrix, the "dead" stuff we used to assume was just the scaffolding holding everything together, is actually apparently rich in biological information instructing cells how to behave and organize. We're only just discovering how to use the stuff to grow organs rather than useless lumps of organ cells. For the forseeable future we'll still need to harvest organs for their matrix, the advantage will be that they don't hav
Not the revolution you are looking for. (Score:5, Insightful)
The cells they chose were from the same type of organ from newborns, therefore there was a large number of stem cells in that particular mix which were already programmed to develop into a new kidney anyway.
The biggest problem is getting cells from your patient, then turning them into stem cells, and then setting them off with some sort of signal or series of signals to develop into a given tissue type. This avoids many host rejection problems and ethics considerations. It would also be useful in in-vitro lab work. For example, I am trying out scaffolds to see if I can get certain cell lines to differentiate into something that better resembles the functionality and complexity of lung tissue. If I could do that, we could reduce experimenting on animals to find out the effects of inhaling pollutants and so on.
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I see a green future in this field. Very soon you will see kidneys, livers etc etc...
There is a company in west coast "organovo" who are working aggressively in this field. I am an investor too..
Are you a community organdizer?
In other news... (Score:3)
Diabetic rats everywhere are now rushing for kidney transplants.
Ultimate species (Score:2)
All these articles make me think that it must be really good to be a rat these days, what with all the medical advances available to them.
Not sure if a really sick rat could afford it, though....
Disclaimer: totally facetious, as always....
Auto-reconfig (Score:2)
Out of curiosity, since we can clearly demonstrate human and animal cells (stem cells) that "know how" (that is, contain the necessary "reconfiguration" information) to individuate to generate all types of biological structures, what is the mainline argument against cells that intrinsically contain all the DNA "data" necessary to similarly individuate directly to varying species?
Surely the mainline Darwinian argument here is stronger than, "cells as of now, absolutely and provably so", and "cells as of back
America is great. best medical care in the world. (Score:3)
for rats.
As a kidney transplant recipient ... (Score:2, Interesting)
The liver will be one of the first lab-grown organs to be transplanted because the liver is a very simple organ. Nearly all cells of the liver do exactly the same thing.
But the kidney is a very comple