Made to order

As research in this direction progresses, medical science will soon be able to routinely offer custom-made body parts for immediate transplantation.

The US scientists’ achievement in ‘growing’ functioning bladders in the lab and transplanting them into patients with bladder disease is a major boon for people waiting for organ transplants. The Wake Forest University team that reported their breakthrough in the Lancet seems to have followed the lead of British researchers whose work on biochemical ‘scaffolding’ in the Eighties promised a new era of a wide range of lab-grown organs. The idea is as simple as it is profound.

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Tissue samples are taken from patients and the cells cultured in the lab. They are then seeded on to a biodegradable bladder-shaped ‘scaffold’ made of collagen, which is bio-chemically removed when the bladders are fully-grown and ready to be transplanted. In this manner, scientists have already grown human skin, cartilage, bone and liver outside the body. But the problem was always in transplanting them, as the body’s immune system normally rejects any tissue that it perceives as alien, forcing the patient to depend on elaborate, and painful, anti-rejection drug regimes to keep the transplanted organ functioning. And since different drugs involved could cause unpleasant side-effects, doctors have to juggle the drug cocktail so that it’s immunosuppressive without being toxic. The Wake Forest University team apparently found a way to prompt the recipient’s immune system to accept the lab-grown transplanted organ — in this case, a bladder.

This latest breakthrough opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for transplant research. As research in this direction progresses, medical science will soon be able to routinely offer custom-made body parts for immediate transplantation.