The Heart Of The Matter
Medical science is progressing at an astonishing rate. Stem cell research has been rapidly developing to promise future alternatives to transplant needs, other than hoping to encourage people to become organ donors. Scientists are now succeeding in growing organ replacements in laboratories; using primary, undifferentiated stem cells in a process termed tissue engineering, to transform themselves into for-now modest organs.
This medical breakthrough promises to truly transform an issue of organ failure translating into increased mortality rates among people who suffer from heart and kidney disease, among other lapses in our bodily functions. The master cells that stem cells represent are manipulated in a laboratory to entice and encourage them to become any other kind of basic building block for a needed organ.
They are placed on a "scaffold", where they become attached and begin to grow and proliferate, until they've managed to produce a substitute organ. What is also transformative about this new medical technology is that the patient's own stem cells can be used for the process, so that their body's immune system will not reject the transplant.
This means that a lifetime of anti-rejection drug usage will not be a necessary component of the procedure. Where the viability of a transplant from an organ donated by someone else depends on the use of powerful anti-rejection drugs. The effects of long-time use of these drugs can themselves be devastating, potentially leading to cancer or other diseases in the organ recipient.
Five months after an operation to replace her damaged windpipe, a 30-year-old mother of two children, is now able to resume her normal life. A new windpipe made from her own stem cells taken from her hip and nose, have given her a new life. Scientists anticipate that in several decades' time surgeons will be able to replace hearts, bladders and kidneys by a similar process.
That operation had used a section of windpipe from an organ donor as a scaffold, still requiring a organ donor. But scientists in Montreal have developed a three-dimensional biodegradable scaffold constructed of a polymer. Once the scaffold, complete with differentiated organ cells is installed in the body, the scaffold itself degrades in time, leaving the cells and the organ they represent, intact.
This represents a truly life-saving medical innovation, enabling more certain intervention than what currently takes place, where people in end-stage diseases on organ replacement lists, languish and die before an organ-appropriate donor can be found to end their suffering.
The world of scientific-medical intervention is imposingly amazing.
This medical breakthrough promises to truly transform an issue of organ failure translating into increased mortality rates among people who suffer from heart and kidney disease, among other lapses in our bodily functions. The master cells that stem cells represent are manipulated in a laboratory to entice and encourage them to become any other kind of basic building block for a needed organ.
They are placed on a "scaffold", where they become attached and begin to grow and proliferate, until they've managed to produce a substitute organ. What is also transformative about this new medical technology is that the patient's own stem cells can be used for the process, so that their body's immune system will not reject the transplant.
This means that a lifetime of anti-rejection drug usage will not be a necessary component of the procedure. Where the viability of a transplant from an organ donated by someone else depends on the use of powerful anti-rejection drugs. The effects of long-time use of these drugs can themselves be devastating, potentially leading to cancer or other diseases in the organ recipient.
Five months after an operation to replace her damaged windpipe, a 30-year-old mother of two children, is now able to resume her normal life. A new windpipe made from her own stem cells taken from her hip and nose, have given her a new life. Scientists anticipate that in several decades' time surgeons will be able to replace hearts, bladders and kidneys by a similar process.
That operation had used a section of windpipe from an organ donor as a scaffold, still requiring a organ donor. But scientists in Montreal have developed a three-dimensional biodegradable scaffold constructed of a polymer. Once the scaffold, complete with differentiated organ cells is installed in the body, the scaffold itself degrades in time, leaving the cells and the organ they represent, intact.
This represents a truly life-saving medical innovation, enabling more certain intervention than what currently takes place, where people in end-stage diseases on organ replacement lists, languish and die before an organ-appropriate donor can be found to end their suffering.
The world of scientific-medical intervention is imposingly amazing.
posted by Pieface @ 6:28 PM
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