Immortality, interstellar travel, human cloning and time travel all fit nicely in to the category of ‘science-fiction,' technological advancements and discoveries which reach way beyond our present human capabilities. Go back a few centuries and the notion of sustained heavier-than-air flight, whilst extensively tested, was still just a dream. Today science has boldly gone where humans never before believed possible. The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) in North Carolina is home to some of the most cutting edge medical breakthroughs of its time. The institute has been successful in growing fully functioning human organs in laboratory trials, as well as limited clinical trials which have thus far proven to be successful. The person responsible for leading the breakthrough is Dr. Anthony Atala, Director of WFIRM. Atala has appeared in more than one occasion before the Technology Education and Design (TED) conference in the United States. During one of his talks, Atala describes the methods used by his institute in creating new organs. “We take a very small piece of tissue from the specific injured or deceased organ less than half the size of a postage stamp. We then take those cells, grow those cells outside the body,” he explained. Once enough cells have been grown, the scientists proceed to coat a scaffold material in the shape of the organ, designed to degrade inside the body. The organ is then exercised to ‘teach' the organ its purpose. Successful laboratory trials have succeeded in creating arteries, muscles, urethras and kidneys. In an interview with Bikyamasr.com, Atala outlined the progress made thus far. “Engineered organs are already available to small groups of patients through clinical trials,” he said. “So far, patients have received laboratory-grown skin, cartilage, bladder, urine tubes and a trachea through regenerative medicine. The goal is to make these available to larger groups of patients and also to expand the types of organs/tissues available. Many years of research and evaluation are required to ensure that these new therapies are safe and effective, so it is difficult to predict how soon they will be widely available,” he added. According to his speech at the TED conference in 2009, it takes about four weeks to grow all the cells required for a bladder to be created. Within 6-8 weeks of grabbing the initial tissue required for cell division, you have a fully functioning bladder ready to be transplanted into the patient. “The most complex are the solid organs because you are using more cells per centimeter,” Atala continues. And if such advancements aren't enough, one of the strategies used by Atala and his crew is the use of a normal desktop printer in conjunction with a 3D modelling program to build a two chambered heart within 40 minutes. Four to 6 hours later, the muscle cells began to contract. Another alternative Atala presents involves grabbing discarded and decellularized organs. The process involves stripping the organ of all cell tissue, what is left behind is a ‘skeleton' of sorts made entirely of collagen, and replacing said tissue with the patient's own. What is revolutionary in these approaches is that the organs themselves will never be rejected by the patient's body because the original DNA is identical. According to Atala, 90 percent of transplant patients on the list are kidney transplants. His crew has also managed to create miniature functioning kidneys. Atala hopes this research will be able to save countless lives in the future. According to him, a patient dies every 30 seconds from diseases that could have been treated with tissue replacement. In the last decade, the number of patients waiting for a transplant has doubled, yet the number of transplants has remained largely stagnant. The research has taken 20 years and over 700 researchers to get to this stage, and human trials with engineered organs have begun with certain therapies as early as 15 years ago. The economic downturn has affected the funding of such projects Atala explained, requiring more time to be spent trying to acquire grants which could have been spent conducting such research. According to him, “it is really difficult to quantify the effect on our project.” The costs for regenerative medicine treatments would depend on the companies that brought the treatments to the market. He believes in some cases the treatment would be cheaper than the alternative in the long term and finances themselves are but one side of the coin. “Dialysis is an extremely expensive option for patients with kidney failure. But finances are only one consideration. Organs engineered with a patient's own cells have the potential to improve quality of life because they won't require anti-rejection drugs and the related side effects, and they won't require a severe deterioration in health while the patient waits for a donor organ,” Atala told Bikyamasr.com “At the end of the day, the promise of regenerative medicine is a single promise, and that promise is to make our patients better,” Atala summed up in his TED conference. BM
