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Medicine Japan

Lab-Grown Heart Muscles Have Been Transplanted Into a Human For the First Time (sciencealert.com) 38

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: On Monday, researchers from Japan's Osaka University announced the successful completion of a first-of-its-kind heart transplant. Rather than replacing their patient's entire heart with a new organ, these researchers placed degradable sheets containing heart muscle cells onto the heart's damaged areas -- and if the procedure has the desired effect, it could eventually eliminate the need for some entire heart transplants.

To grow the heart muscle cells, the team started with induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. These are stem cells that researchers create by taking an adult's cells -- often from their skin or blood -- and reprogramming them back into their embryonic-like pluripotent state. At that point, researchers can coax the iSP cells into becoming whatever kind of cell they'd like. In the case of this Japanese study, the researchers created heart muscle cells from the iSP cells before placing them on small sheets.
The patient, which suffers from ischemic cardiomyopathy, will be monitored for the next year. If all goes well, the researchers hope to conduct the same procedure on nine other people suffering from the same condition within the next three years.
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Lab-Grown Heart Muscles Have Been Transplanted Into a Human For the First Time

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  • Implanted (Score:4, Informative)

    by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @11:56PM (#59669978)

    Transplanted is when it goes from one body and into another.

    • Re:Implanted (Score:4, Informative)

      by az-saguaro ( 1231754 ) on Thursday January 30, 2020 @02:00AM (#59670122)

      Transplant means to "trans-" "plant", plant as in sowing, or moving or transferring, a living material, and trans- meaning across or to another place.

      In medicine, transplantation is often qualified by prefixes or adjectives to clarify what type of transplantation, e.g.:

      allotranplant or allogeneic transplant - between individuals of the same species.

      xeno- or xenogeneic transplant - between individuals of different species.

      auto- or autogeneic or autologous transplant - from one place to another on the same individual.

      organ transplant - a whole organ (with any of the prefixes above as required).

      cell or tissue transplant - same concept, with small samples of organized or dis-aggregated cells.

      cultured cell transplant - as in this report.

      E.g., when a parathyroidectomy is done for hyperparathyroidism, it is important to save roughly half of one of the 4 glands, so as not to render the patient permanently hypocalcemic. But we need to save the piece somewhere we can find it if it again hypertrophies and gets overactive, so we move it from the neck to muscles in the forearm - that is an "autologous parathyroid transplant".

      As you stated, "when it goes from one body and into another", that is just a subset of transplantation.

      The use of the word "transplant" in this article is correct.

      Most of the rest of the article is weak and self promotional for something not well fleshed out or carefully studied yet, but the diction was spot on.

      • While everything you said is true, leading a discussion about meaning with etymology is potentially dangerous.

      • I think everyone here should argue more about what labels are morally right or wrong to use for a definition we all agree on, instead of talking about things of actual meaning.

        It's the USian way!

    • Verb /tran(t)splant/
      move or transfer (something) to another place or situation, typically with some effort or upheaval.
      "his endeavor to transplant people from Russia to the Argentine"

      noun /tran(t)splant/
      an operation in which an organ or tissue is transplanted.
      "a heart transplant"

      Well, there goes your hypothesis, it was used as a verb in the headline, and it was described as an operation where tissue was transplanted in the article. It's literally textbook definition of correct usage. You might want to be sure of yourself before you accuse someone else of using language incorrectly.

      The word has been around much longer than the medical science, and it's also been used in horticulture for much longer than the surgical procedures have existed.

    • Transplanted organs rarely go from one body to another. There's usually a cooler in the middle.
    • Well, well, looks we have a 23rd level grammaticaster in our midst. ( http://phrontistery.info/aster... [phrontistery.info] )

      Transplant
      transitive verb
      1 : to lift and reset (a plant) in another soil or situation
      2 : to remove from one place or context and settle or introduce elsewhere : relocate
      3 : to transfer (an organ or tissue) from one part or individual to another

      It appears that they could be using either definition 2, or 3, and would be correct either way.

      Did you know that words often have more than one definition? Did you

    • Transplanted from the lab where they grew?
  • The Tin Man, Dick Cheney, Stephen Miller ...

  • 1 now
    9 next year
    Everyone in 10 maybe

    Only 150,000,000 deaths worldwide during that period.

    Yeah, thanks FDA for your precautionary and slo-mo principles.

    One death in front of the camera politicians can complain over is worth, well, 150,000,000 potentially. You never save as many by dragging ass as you cost through slowness.

  • The article didn't mention whether the induced stem cells were produced by fusion with embryonic stem cells. If they were not, would this mean the writing is on the wall for the stem cell storage businesses?

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