Sounds like science fiction, but scientists think that it's only a few years away, though there are still issues that need to be resolved and the technologies involved are in their early stages of development:
The Boston researchers used a more mature cell type known as a progenitor. They first operated on the patients to remove bad tissue that made up more than half their bladders. They fished out muscle and bladder wall cells, seeded them on cup-like bladder-shaped scaffolds of collagen, then let the cells reproduce in the lab for seven weeks. Starting with tens of thousands, they ended up with about 1.5 billion cells. The cell-bearing molds were then surgically sewn back to the remnants of the patients' original and partly working bladders, where the lab-nurtured cells kept maturing.
In undergoing the experimental procedure, the patients skirted the typical side effects of grafts that would otherwise have been made with their own intestinal tissue.
Atala, who has since moved to Wake Forest University, has already begun commercializing his transplant techniques through Tengion, a company he helped found in King of Prussia, Pa. It has licensing rights to patents on his work, and some of his research collaborators have acted as consultants.
Some researchers were more cautious about the promise shown with the new procedure, saying the study lacks any direct comparison group of patients getting the traditional graft.
Dr. Joseph Zwischenberger, who edits the journal of the American Society of Artificial Internal Organs, questioned how well the new bladders worked in the first few patients and raised a "red flag" about two patients who left the study for personal reasons and were ultimately omitted from the results. He also said Atala's attempts to commercialize the technique should add some skepticism toward the findings, which he nonetheless called "very interesting preliminary data."
No comments:
Post a Comment