Beginning in 1980, scientists have been trying to find a solution to the progressing problem of organ transplants. Many concerns come with transplanting an organ into the body; the two major issues are a lack of donors and a high rejection rate. A proposed solution to the rising issue is growing artificial organs in a lab. As technology advances, researchers are becoming increasingly closer to successfully growing a functioning organ that can be transplanted into a human body.
When researchers first began the climb to successfully grow internal organs in a lab, many barriers needed to be overcome; the first being growing ticker tissues. In the article “Lab-Grown Organs Begin to Take Shape,” Robert Langer, inspired by the branching of seaweed, developed polymers that had a branching structure (Ferber 1999). Branching is a way to increase the surface area of the polymers, and therefore they can absorb more nutrients to grow thick and strong enough to support a complex organ. All progressions in tissue and organ engineering following Langer’s discovery used his branch structured polymers. His design led to the first man-made tissues, skin and cartilage, which were used in clinics. Langer’s discovery brought researchers closer to developing man-made, transplantable organs because he figured out a way to make basic tissues strong enough to grow into complex organs.
The next greatest step in the biomedical engineering of tissues was led by Laura Niklason and her research team from Yale University in 2009. By placing cells on a functioning lung, the team was able to grow lung tissue. The researchers used nine different types of cells and reported that all nine types grew to perform their appropriate task as part of the lung tissue. The ...
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...ed jet-based 3D tissue engineering. ScienceDirect [Internet]. 2003 Apr [cited 2013 Nov 2]; 21(4):157-161. Available from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
4. Murphy SV. Organ engineering- to produce bioengineered organs for transplantation. Ideas that Push the Boundaries [Internet]. 2012 Sep 20 [cited 2013 Nov 4]; 35(3): 163-172. Available from: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201200062/full
5. Rustad CK., Sorkin M., Levi B., Longaker MT., Gurtner GC. Strategies for organ level tissue engineering. Landes Bioscience [Internet]. 2010 Sep [cited 2013 Nov 3]; 6(3): 151-157 Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2946046/
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Thesis: I will explain the history of organ transplants, starting with ancient ideas before modern science until the 21st century.
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...
Currently 70,000 Americans are on the organ waiting list and fewer than 20,000 of these people can hope to have their lives saved by human organ transplantation.1 As a result of this shortage, there has been a tremendous demand for research in alternative methods of organ transplantation. Private companies are racing to develop these technologies with an estimated market of six billion dollars.2 Xenotransplantation, or cross-species organ transplantation, appears to be the most likely solution in the near future, and cloned pigs are the main candidates. Pigs and humans have remarkable similarities in physiology, which along with cloning makes pigs strong possibilities for organ donors. A controversial alternative method involves the use of genetically altered headless human beings as organ donors. Although this method may not be developed for some years, scientists are already discussing the necessary technologies. Whether the solution is the cloning of a pig or a human, organ farms may provide us with a solution to our ever-increasing need for donors.
The rising shortage of donor organs has led scientists to genetically engineer animals that will produce organs suitable for transplant into humans. Pigs are well suited to the procedure because their organs are similar in size to a human’s, and they breed prolifically.
Making pig organs suitable for humans is a giant task; a task that needs a goal. Lei Xiao, of the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, who led their research explains that they modified pigs stem cells would be useful because the pigs organs are very similar to human organs. They would use the stem cells of an embryo and adjust the immune genes from the human to make the pig organ compatible to the human immune system. They would then provide the organs available to patients and the organs will not be rej...
Pohlmeier, B., & Eenennaam, A. V. (2008). Biomedical applications of genetically engineered and cloned animals. Retrieved from http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/animalbiotech/Outreach/Biomedical_applications_genetically_engineered_animals.pdf
MSU, Jeremy. "Tiny 3D-Printed Liver Slices Pave Way for Growing Organs." LiveScience.com. Live Science, 06 Nov. 2013. Web. 22 Nov. 2013.
Our own immune system such as macrophages help in restoring the damage in the heart for example, damage caused by myocardial infarction. Macrophages responsibilities are to clear the infarcted area and activate other cells, such as fibroblasts, endothelial cells and progenitor cells to help the healing process of the blood vessels (Mercola et al. 2011). Tissue regenerative in today’s world uses the stem cell technology to repair, replace and regenerate the cells of the injured organ or tissues. It is a combination of engineering principles and life sciences in order to create something that able to proliferate and regenerate as well as sustaining and improving its functions. This purpose can be achieved by applying functional cells, scaffolds supplementary, stimulate the growth and signal molecules to needed areas. The scaffold delivers as physical support for the cells as well as to function as organizer guiding the cell growth and differentiation (Leor et al. 2005).
Around 8,000 people die every year waiting for an organ transplant because there is a shortage of human organs available. Xenotransplantation, the process of grafting or transplanting cells, tissue, or organs between two different species (non- human to human), could be a solution to increasing the donor list. Xenotransplants have been performed before, but with new technology, like regenerative medicine and stem cells research, emerging during the same time period, much of the attention and the funding support went to the other research because of the more promising future and less ethical problems (Cozzi 288). Some of the general public, scientists, and government agencies believe that with xenotransplants having so many ethical problems
The history of organ transplants includes many different efforts, which none have been too successful. The main problem is that there are not as many donors and patients. Waiting lists have up to 95,000 people on them and less than 1/3 receive adequate organs. Many patients on the wait list end up dying, and this is becoming a problem of huge importance. Other efforts to stop the crisis have been rewarding the families of donors and educating the public about the benefits of donating organs. Neither of these has generated enough donors to stop the problem. 3D printing would be the quickest way to save these people’s lives. The 3D printers use layers of materials to construct objects. This process is called additive manufacturing. When they print layers of biomaterial to form cells and tissues it is called bioprinting. Bioprinting is what will be used to construct the 3D organs. Previously scientists have printed structures that only have one type of cell. That is because they are easier to print and are very simple structures. That includes skin for burn victims. Also tubular structures...
Yadav, P. R., & Tyagi, R. (2008). Biotechnology of animal tissues. New Delhi, IN: Discovery Publishing House.
Xenotransplantation is the science of the future. By taking animal organs and putting them into humans, we eliminate the loss of life due to scarcity of human organ donations. No longer should the sick have to wait for their new organ because of the scarcity of human organs available to be transplanted.
Cloning is another new medical advance that allows for many great possibilites. Exact organ matches for organ transplants could be made through cloning. Animal...
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]