Tissue engineering can join the list of medical advances that science-fiction movies beat reality to. This component of regenerative medicine is one of the newest and most intriguing aspects of medicine and is guaranteed to enhance the quality of health care universally. “Miraculous Recovery: Rat Regenerates Heart”, was the compelling article title in my Human Anatomy class that introduced me to tissue engineering. The notion of using stem cells to recreate an entire organ, of using the decellularized extracellular matrix of a rat to reanimate a heart, was simply astounding. I read more about this field and found out how it is thanks to tissue regeneration that man regrew a part of his finger after a toy helicopter accident, a boy received
The bond between humans and nature, it is fascinating to see how us has humans and nature interact with each other and in this case the essay The Heart’s Fox by Josephine Johnson is an example of judging the unknown of one's actions. She talks about a fox that had it's life taken as well as many others with it, the respect for nature is something that is precious to most and should not be taken advantage of. Is harming animals or any part of nature always worth it? I see this text as a way of saying that we must be not so terminate the life around us. Today I see us a s experts at destroying most around us and it's sad to see how much we do it and how it's almost as if it's okay to do and sadly is see as it nature itself hurts humans unintentionally
In this figure, SN = sinus node; AVN = AV node; RA = right atrium; LA
History was made on December 02, 1982 when Barney Clark became the first recipient of an artificial heart transplant, which was performed by the medical staff at the University of Utah Medical Center. Although Barney Clark was the center of attention, there were many events that led up to this historical moment.
Brendan Maher, in his article “How to Build a Heart” discusses doctor’s and engineer’s research and experimentation into the field of regenerative medicine. Maher talks about several different researchers in this fields. One is Doris Taylor, the director of regenerative medicine at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. Her job includes harvesting organs such as hearts and lungs and re-engineering them starting with the cells. She attempts to bring the back to life in order to be used for people who are on transplant waiting lists. She hopes to be able to make the number of people waiting for transplants diminish with her research but it is a very difficult process. Maher says that researchers have had some successes when it comes to rebuilding organs but only with simples ones such as a bladder. A heart is much more complicated and requires many more cells to do all the functions it needs to. New organs have to be able to do several things in order for them to be used in humans that are still alive. They need to be sterile, able to grow, able to repair themselves, and work. Taylor has led some of the first successful experiments to build rat hearts and is hopeful of a good outcome with tissue rebuilding and engineering. Scientists have been able to make beating heart cells in a petri dish but the main issue now is developing a scaffold for these cells so that they can form in three dimension. Harold Ott, a surgeon from Massachusetts General Hospital and studied under Taylor, has a method that he developed while training. Detergent is pumped into a glass chamber where a heart is suspended and this detergent strips away everything except a layer of collagen, laminins, and other proteins. The hard part according to Ott is making s...
Stem cell research began in 1956 when Dr. E Donnall Thomas performed the first bone marrow transplant (“Adult stem cells are not more promising,” 2007). Since that time, research has evolved into obtaining cells from a variety of tissues. According to stem cell research professors, Ariff Bongso and Eng Hin Lee (2005), “Stem cells are unspecialized cells in the human body that are capable of becoming cells, each with new specialized functions” (p. 2). Stem cells are in various adult tissues, such as bone marrow, the liver, the epidermis layer of skin, the central nervous system, and eyes. They are also in other sources, such as fetuses, umbilical cords, placentas, embryos, and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which are cells from adult tissues that have been reprogrammed to pluripotency. Most stem cells offer multipotent cells, which are sparse...
...ogist regrows monkey hearts with human stem cells”. Guardian News and Media, 30 Apr. 2014. Web. 7 May 2014. The Guardian.
State: The cardiac cycle is composed of five stages which each trigger the relaxation or contraction of the atria or ventricles and direction of blood flow.
Just as breast cancer is killing our African American women, heart disease is also one of the major diseases killing our women. Heart disease is one of the nation’s leading causes of death in both woman and men. About 600,000 people die of heart disease in the United States (Americas heart disease burden, 2013). Some facts about heart disease are every year about 935,000 Americans have a heart attack. Of these, 610,000 are a first heart attack victim. 325,000 happen in people who have already had a heart attack. Also coronary heart disease alone costs the United States $108.9 billion each year. This total includes the cost of health care services, medications, and loss of productivity. Deaths of heart disease in the United States back in 2008 killed about 24.5% of African Americans.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States (1). The medical community is constantly looking for new technologies and discoveries to treat heart disease more effectively. Methods include mechanical based therapies such as artificial heart valves and drug based approaches as with anticoagulant medications. Recently, exciting new discoveries have been made by the scientific community in the development of stem cell based therapies. If scientist could identify and cultivate cells that would reestablish oxygenated blood flow to damaged heart tissue and generate new muscle tissue it would change the landscape of cardiovascular medicine. Actually, this process has already begun as research focuses on a specific cell with these qualities, the mesenchymal stem cell.
The human heart has four chambers, the right atrium, left atrium, left ventricle, and right ventricle. The human heart has a ton of amazing features. The normal heart rate for adults is 120/80. The human heart weighs twelve ounces and beats at seventy-two beats per minute it is the size of a human fist. Its blood flow has many functions and is extremely vital to our bodies. We would not be able to survive without our heart. I will talk about the functions of our heart and the blood flow of our heart. I will go in detail to let you know things you probably have never heard. Our heart, its four chambers, and blood flow are very interesting and vital to our well-being. Many things can ruin the process of the heart and the way that it works. I will talk about all of the ways that ruin it and I will cover the valves of the heart as well, which are important to the blood flow of the heart.
The field of bioprinting, using 3D printing technology for producing live cells with extreme accuracy, could be the answer to many of the problems we as humans face in the medical field. It could be the end to organ waiting lists and an alternative for organ transplants. In 3D printing technology lies the potential to replace the testing of new drugs on animals. However, the idea of applying 3 dimensional printing to the health industry is still quite new and yet to have a major impact. Manufacturing working 3D organs remains an enormous challenge, but in theory could solve major issues present today.
The medical world is no stranger to controversy surrounding its attempts to create a utopia with no disease or injury that cannot be cured. To summarize it, regenerative medicine is a new practice that allows our body to fix itself using its own cells. This would not only cure, for example, a pair of failing kidneys; it would eliminate the thousands of deaths a year of those on the waiting list for an organ donation. The ability to regenerate dying cells, which make up the tissue forming an organ, is possible with stem cells. A stem cell is a simple cell that has the ability to grow into any specialized cell in the body. There are three different forms of these stem cells found within the human body. Somatic stem cells, also referred to as
There are 3d printers in development that allow doctors to create a heart, lung, or other organs created from a persons genetic tissue. At Cornell University researchers were able to create an ear. In San Diego there is a form that has shown the work they've done at printing human livers. Scientists in Scotland are attempting to print blobs of human embryonic stem cells which would be useful for further research on things like cancer testing drugs. Researchers are attempting to create a working heart using 3D printers. A women had a condition where her skull was becoming too think instead of the normal 1.5 cm her skull was around 5 cm. This was causing a loss of motor skills among other things for the woman. She was also having memory problems as well. Doctors had printed out a skull, this allowed the woman to return to life as normal. Since the cells used would be from the person in need of a transplant there is little to no chance of rejection from the body.
One of the most beneficial aspects to cloning is the ability to duplicate organs. Many patients in hospitals are waiting for transplants and many of them are dying because they are not receiving a needed organ. To solve this problem, scientists have been using embryonic stem cells to produce organs or tissues to repair or replace damaged ones (Human Cloning). Skin for burn victims, brain cells for the brain damaged, hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys can all be produced. By combining the technology of stem cell research and human cloning, it will be possible to produce the needed tissues and organs for patients in desperate need for a transplant (Human Cloning). The waiting list for transplants will become a lot shorter and a lot less people will have to suff...
The field of regenerative medicine encompasses numerous strategies, including the use of materials and de novo generated cells, as well as various combinations thereof, to take the place of missing tissue, effectively replacing it both structurally and functionally, or to contribute to tissue healing[29]