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Coming soon: Factory-built spare parts for human body
Soon, it would be possible to grow replacements for virtually any part of the human body as scientists believe that spare human parts factories could be just years away as they discovered it is possible to grow new organs.
Soon, it would be possible to grow replacements for virtually any part of the human body.
Scientists believe that spare human parts factories could be just years away as they discovered it is possible to grow new organs.
They have already grown the bladder, urethra and windpipe, which have been implanted into patients during clinical trials.
Now scientists have set their sights on replicating more complicated organs, including the heart, kidneys, liver, pancreas and thymus.
The advances could extend life expectancy and cut waiting times for transplants, reported the Sunday Times.
The developments were detailed at a conference on ‘rejuvenation technologies’ at Cambridge University.
Professor Paolo Macchiarini, of the Karolinska institute in Sweden, said how he implanted a laboratory-grown windpipe into a man sticken by throat cancer.
It had been created by using an artificial ‘scaffold’ designed in the shape of a windpipe, which was implanted with the patient''s stem cells.
“This could open new and very promising therapeutic possibilities for the thousands of patients who suffer from conditions that constrict the airway,” the Daiy Mail quoted Macchiarini as saying.
Professor Doris Taylor of Minnesota University has already created a beating human heart by stripping dead cells from a donor organ and reseeding it with live ones.
Professor Shay Soker of Wake Forest University in North Carolina has created miniature human livers by seeding the protein skeleton from a rat''s liver with human liver stem cells.
