DailyDirt: Making Backups Of Your Organs

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Organ transplant procedures are becoming amazingly complex and reliable. Still, it's a good idea to try to keep your original equipment in good working order. But if you do start having an organ fail on you, it's nice to know there are some options -- and the options are getting better. Here are just a few advances in getting donor organs that don't necessarily involve other people dying.

• Tens of thousands of people are on a waiting list for a kidney transplant because it's not easy to find a matching donor. About 3,000 new patients are added to the list (in the US alone) each month, but a new procedure called desensitization could make organ rejection far less common -- and improve the odds for people looking for a kidney transplant. This method could also be suitable for other organ transplants, but it requires a living donor -- so it's a bit easier to find "spare" kidneys than, say, livers. [url]
• Roughly 4,000 patients in the US are waiting for a heart transplant. Growing a heart from stem cells in a lab might be possible someday, and researchers have gotten a tiny step closer to doing so. It's just not easy to grow tens of billions of cells into a functioning adult heart -- unless you're a baby. [url]
• There are "farms" already trying to grow human tissue inside pigs and sheep -- perhaps developing a way to grow human hearts, kidneys, livers or any other organ on demand. These "human-animal chimeras" aren't being funded with federal NIH funds, but there are other agencies and research groups working on "humanized" animals. Lab mice have been successfully altered to grow a rat pancreas, so it's likely that other animals should be able to grow viable human organs as well. [url]

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Filed Under: biotech, chimerism, health, hearts, kidneys, medicine, organ transplant, stem cells, xenotransplantation

DailyDirt: Growing Backup Organs

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Medical science has advanced quite a bit with organ transplants, but there's still the problem of matching donors and the "availability" of organs. Obviously, there are some ethical issues with buying/selling human organs, but getting organs from non-human mammals has its own set of problems, too. The engineering challenges are slowly being solved, and we might be able to grow backup organs in a few years. Maybe.

• Pigs have long been a leading candidate for growing replacement human organs, despite concerns over genetic differences, disease transmission and organ rejection. Still, researchers have edited over 60 genes in some pig embryos to make these animals more compatible in human transplant recipients. Don't go destroying your liver just yet, though; it'll be a while before these genetically engineered pigs are ready to donate their organs safely to people. [url]
• Primitive human kidneys have been grown from stem cells in a lab -- possibly leading to growing more mature kidneys for organ transplants someday. The "organoids" that have been grown so far have some, but not all, of the key features that a full kidney has. So this development is still pretty far from preventing people from needing dialysis, but it could be useful for studying how kidneys react to new drugs and help researchers understand how other complex organs might be grown from stem cells. [url]
• Xenotransplantation isn't a new idea, but getting organs from different species to avoid rejection is still a significant challenge. Genetically modified pigs have been used as organ donors for baboons with encouraging results: a baboon lived for 2.5 years with a pig heart implant, another baboon lived 4 months with a "life-sustaining" pig kidney. [url]

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Filed Under: biotech, crispr, gene editing, gmo, kidneys, medicine, organ transplant, organoids, stem cells, xenotransplantation

DailyDirt: No More Urban Legends Of Waking Up In A Bathtub Without Your Kidneys...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are plenty of ethical issues with organ transplants and how to handle the undersupply of donors. Hopefully, medical science is getting advanced enough to grow organs and eliminate the shortage of organs for patients who need them. Here are just a few stories about organs in modern medicine.

• A 6-way paired kidney transplant operation took 2 days and a handful of surgeons to complete. Software called MatchGrid identifies chains of donors and recipients that can optimize organ compatibility and significantly shorten the recipient wait list. [url]
• Researchers have grown mini-stomachs from stem cells -- technically, just the lower end of the stomach, but still. Petri-dish stomachs could help in learning how to prevent certain stomach cancers and potentially lead to stomach patches for ulcers. [url]
• Are there really vestigial organs in your body? Living without a gall bladder or appendix is not uncommon, but who gets these organs removed as a precaution? (Answer: Antarctic explorers and perhaps some astronauts.) [url]

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Filed Under: appendix, cancer, gall bladder, health, kidneys, matchgrid, organ, organ transplant, regeneration, stem cells, stomach, ulcer