Inside the Effort To Print Lungs and Breathe Life Into Them With Stem Cells (technologyreview.com) 57
United Therapeutics, a startup that sells drugs to treat lung ailments, plans to use a 3-D printer to manufacture human lungs in "unlimited quantities." Bioprinting isn't a new idea. 3-D printers can make human skin, even retinas. Yet the method has been limited to tissues that are very small or very thin and lack blood vessels. From a report: United instead is developing a printer that it believes will be able, within a few years, to manufacture a solid, rubbery outline of a lung in exquisite detail, including all 23 descending branches of the airway, the gas-exchanging alveoli, and a delicate network of capillaries. A lung made from collagen won't help anyone: it's to a real lung what a rubber chicken is to an actual hen. So United is also developing ways to impregnate the matrix with human cells so they'll attach and burrow into it, bringing it alive.
[...] United has already made some risky organ bets. One of its subsidiaries, Revivicor, supplies surgeons with hearts, kidneys, and lungs from genetically engineered pigs (these have been used in baboons, so far). Another, Lung Bioengineering, refurbishes lungs from human donors by pumping warm solution into them. About 250 people have already received lungs that would otherwise have been designated medical waste. Don't expect fully manufactured organs soon. United, in its company projections, predicts it won't happen for another 12 years. United CEO Martine Rothblatt acknowledges that the printed structure I saw is just a start. "It's only two branches and no cells," she says.
[...] United has already made some risky organ bets. One of its subsidiaries, Revivicor, supplies surgeons with hearts, kidneys, and lungs from genetically engineered pigs (these have been used in baboons, so far). Another, Lung Bioengineering, refurbishes lungs from human donors by pumping warm solution into them. About 250 people have already received lungs that would otherwise have been designated medical waste. Don't expect fully manufactured organs soon. United, in its company projections, predicts it won't happen for another 12 years. United CEO Martine Rothblatt acknowledges that the printed structure I saw is just a start. "It's only two branches and no cells," she says.
What they' really working on (Score:1)
is figuring out how to make the replacement lungs only last 1 year, so the patients have to pay over and over.
Really? (Score:2)
figuring out how to make the replacement lungs only last 1 year, so the patients have to pay over and over.
Wow, cynical much?
Clueless (Score:2)
Given medical corporations raise drug prices on old drugs 10X, maybe you are gullible.
Yeah yeah drug companies are greedy, news at 11... You really think lung transplants are the same thing? Here's a clue - drugs have big capital costs to develop but cost very little to replicate. There is no way a lab grown lung is going to be cheap to manufacture or easily sold multiple times since it involves major surgery. Nobody is going to be able to afford this treatment without insurance and insurance sure as hell isn't going to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a lung that doesn't las
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Yeah, but small price to pay to be able to start smoking again!!!
[BAEG]
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Yeah, but small price to pay to be able to start smoking again!!!
Apparently you never heard of other conditions [livestrong.com] which cause severe and irrecoverable damage to the lungs that have nothing to do with smoking.
At least smokers' lungs can potentially heal (providing they haven't developed COPD).
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Big Organ is profiting off human suffering (Score:2)
Welcome to capitalism (Score:2)
...of which the basis is profiting from unmet need.
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Isn't it the act of *meeting the need* that (rightfully) results in profit?
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Isn't it the act of *meeting the need* that (rightfully) results in profit?
No! It's so much better to not get needs met, as long as you stick it to the Man!
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Isn't it the act of *meeting the need* that (rightfully) results in profit?
That's one theory. Another theory is that it is predatory to profit from others' need, and that profit should come from adding value, not from taking advantage of people. Most of the wealth in capitalism concentrates at the top, with those who are taking advantage of others — not with the people at the bottom, who are actually doing the work that serves the need.
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...of which the basis is profiting from unmet need.
You can theoretically get your replacement lung in communist countries, but it takes 5 years. If you know someone in the Party.
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Comedy is tough (Score:2)
Nobody seems to have a sense of humor, and some of the responses seem outright delusional.
Or maybe you just weren't being as funny as you think you were. Happens to all of us sometimes especially online where tone is hard to convey... Admittedly joking about people mortgaging their homes to buy a lung is tough to pull off successfully unless you are standing on a stage in a comedy club.
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Insurance (Score:3)
How long before we have to beg for lungs and mortgage our homes just to breathe?
Just until the US gets a conscience and starts treating health care as a fundamental human right and providing care to all their citizens without them risking bankruptcy. Seriously, if you have a single payer health care system like most of the civilized world this isn't a problem.
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You're preaching to the choir. Most of us anyway. It's the republicans you have to convince.
FTFY. Though sometimes I wonder if there is much of a difference [bbc.com]...
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And then, since no one can make money on it, no innovation occurs.
Research and $ (Score:2)
And then, since no one can make money on it, no innovation occurs.
You seriously think no medical innovations come out of Europe or Japan or China or that companies there make no money on drugs or medical devices? If you think that then you'd be wildly wrong.
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And then, since no one can make money on it, no innovation occurs.
Because massive and unnecessary profits to insurance companies and hospitals is how innovation occurs.....
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Massive and unnecessary profits ... so that's why hospitals go into bankruptcy.
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"Fundamental rights" are things that can't be taken away from you.
So...life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness? If "pursuit of happiness" can be extrapolated to cover property then "life" could easily be extrapolated to cover health.
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So...life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness? If "pursuit of happiness" can be extrapolated to cover property ...
Actually (according to an historian of my acquaintance) the original buzzphrase, used heavily in the political debates of the time, was "Life, liberty, and property.". When he wrote the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson changed the last to "pursuit of happiness" to broaden it (while still including "property"). Acquiring stuff, and keeping others from taking it aw
Re: Insurance (Score:2)
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If you are trying to argue it's slavery because it forces doctors to charge certain prices, well, then they are already slaves because they can only charge what's been agreed upon with insurance companies.
IF they chose to accept a particular insurance company's special arrangements. (Many didn't, would charge what they chose, and any insured of the unaffiliated companies would be liable for the difference between what the medic charged and the company paid, if they chose to be treated by that doctor.)
With
Own cells... (Score:2)
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Even with fetal stem cells, it's still worth it. Abortions will happen, legal or not. Might as well derive some use from them. This being said, the goal is to grow lungs from a patient's OWN stem cells -- removes the risk of rejection.
Hear hear.
Fortunately all around: Foetal stem cells, even when not rejected, tend to cause cancers when transplanted into an adult. (They get confused about what they should be doing.) Meanwhile, pluripotent stem cells from the patient (with pluripotency induced or just the
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This is probably the most interesting 'News for Nerds' in the past month - yet almost no comments, and those posted are attempting to be funny.
Where did Slashdot go?
Tell me about it. B-b
Unfortunately, those afflicted with the left-wing meme set - a descendant of Stalinism - have gone into a full-court press on social pressure, in every venu where they can rant.
That leaves the non-afflicted among us (along with those afflicted with competing memes) with a choice between:
* letting the SJWs rant unopp