We Can Now Grow New Organs Inside the Body

This is big.

This is news that will still matter 10 years, 50 years, and 100 years from now. 

It may even make a big difference in your life someday, or the life of someone you know.

Scientists are beginning to learn how to grow new organs inside the living human body (via Lucianne):

A team of scientists and surgeons at a Melbourne hospital has developed a method of growing new organs within a patient's body.

Previously, scientists had only been able to create two-dimensional constructions such as skin.

But researchers at the Bernard O'Brien Institute of Microsurgery at Melbourne's St Vincent's Hospital say have created three-dimensional cells.

The cells have been grown in a plastic chamber under the patients' skin.

"We have developed a special chamber and this is essentially an empty box into which we implant a blood vessel using microsurgery techniques," lead researcher Professor Wayne Morrison said.

"We let them grow according to the specific environment that we can create.

"Now currently we have been able to make breast tissue, fat, muscle, pancreas tissue that secretes insulin and we have also created thymus tissue, which may have an application in immunology."

Professor Morrison predicts the discovery will ultimately lead to the creation of human organs, including parts of the heart, using patients' own stem cells.

He says such a scenario would reduce the problem of immune rejection, which is often associated with organ transplants.

The implications for extending human life are staggering.

Comments

[benning]

Wow! Fascinating news, Gina!