Organs Made to Order
It won't be long before surgeons routinely install replacement body parts created in the laboratory
- By Gretchen Vogel
- Smithsonian magazine, July-August 2010, Subscribe
Anthony Atala works in the body shop of the future. He is the director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and he and his colleagues use human cells to grow muscles, blood vessels, skin and even a complete urinary bladder. Much of the work is experimental and hasn’t yet been tested in human patients, but Atala has implanted laboratory-grown bladders into more than two dozen children and young adults born with defective bladders that don’t empty properly, a condition that can cause kidney damage. The bladders were the first lab-generated human organs implanted in people. If they continue to perform well in clinical tests, the treatment may become standard not only for birth defects of the bladder but also for bladder cancer and other conditions.
Atala and co-workers make replacement parts out of patients’ own raw materials. To produce a bladder, they remove a small piece of a patient’s organ and separate out muscle cells and urothelial cells, which line the urinary tract. They put the cells into lab dishes and bathe each type in a fluid that prompts them to multiply. After six weeks, there are enough living cells for an entire bladder. The researchers then pour the muscle cells onto the outside of a scaffold made of collagen, the protein in connective tissue, and polyglycolic acid, a material used in absorbable sutures. Two days later, they coat the inside of the scaffold with urothelial cells. The new bladder is nurtured in an incubator that mimics body conditions, allowing the cells to grow and knit together. The bladder is then implanted into a patient, where the scaffold gradually dissolves. The researchers have standardized the bladder-growing procedure, Atala says with a smile, and now make “small, medium, large and extra-large sizes.”
Regenerative medicine’s once-wild ideas are fast becoming reality. Late last year, Organovo, a biotech company in San Diego, began distributing the first commercially available body-part printer. Yes, you read correctly: a printer for body parts. Using the same idea as an ink-jet printer, it jets laser-guided droplets of cells and scaffold material onto a movable platform. With each pass of the printer head, the platform sinks, and the deposited material gradually builds up a 3-D piece of tissue. Regenerative medicine laboratories around the world have relied on the printer to generate pieces of skin, muscle and blood vessels. Atala’s lab has used the technology to construct a two-chambered mouse-size heart in about 40 minutes.
Atala and his colleagues have also managed to fashion lab-built kidneys that produce urine when implanted into experimental animals. And within a few years, he says, human skin could be coaxed into growing in a lab and be given to burn victims and other patients who today must undergo painful skin grafts.
Organs grown outside the body will transform medicine, Atala predicts, but spurring repair and regrowth within the body will be just as important. He and other scientists foresee injecting healthy cells and growth-inducing molecules into diseased or injured lungs, livers and hearts, prompting them to regenerate. Then there’s the ultimate challenge: Could a patient someday regrow an entire limb?
“It is not outside the realm of possibility,” Atala says. “If a salamander can do it, why can’t a human?” Scientists are getting closer to understanding the subtle genetic and physiological processes that allow salamanders to regenerate their limbs from scratch. More clues are coming from lab mice that have a genetic mutation that allows them to partially regrow severed digits.
Will doctors 40 years from now be able to help humans regrow severed spinal cords, damaged hearts or even lost limbs? Atala says he is optimistic: “The things that are possible today were a dream 20 years ago.”
Gretchen Vogel lives in Berlin and writes for Science.
Subscribe now for more of Smithsonian's coverage on history, science and nature.
Comments (18)
+ View All Comments
The first picture on this page I honestly cannot tell whether it is an ear or a bladder????
Posted by Victoria Noriega on November 26,2012 | 01:43 PM
SICK
Posted by kedarnath jonnalagadda M.Sc.(Genetics) on October 4,2012 | 10:41 PM
I have a science essay i am typing about this.
Since mitosis is such an easy process happening all the time, why has it taken so long for this technology?
why would it cost so much if you are using your own cells?
Please answer my questions soon. thanks!!
Posted by Bianca on November 28,2011 | 01:41 PM
EPPPICCCC!
Posted by dick jones on March 9,2011 | 07:18 AM
This field that this study is called biopharming and cows can already produce their own body parts. Also human organs are being produced on the experimental cows.
Posted by Emily on September 20,2010 | 05:03 PM
What the world needs is a genetically modified faster breeding early maturing short lived human much as the hormone laced food of America causes in the American population! America now has little girls of 6 or 7 years, growing breasts! Marvelous! Cannon fodder, breeders and factory feed by 13 or 14 years old! Fabulous! Now, to introduce an early death - at 40 or 50, say, so that they fit the accountancy tables for insurability better, and require no old age care - reintroduce smoking and lung cancers to kill them all off early to save money! Legalize pot! Make them complacent, but on track for early death by lung disease! Better yet! Feed them burgers til they die of early, sudden heart attacks or high blood pressure! No more old folks expenses for the corporate structures to bear! Ideal! Now we can compete with Asians more economically, and increase ROI almost at will. We need one more thing to complete the equation - a moral breakdown so that the little buggers procreate like crazy to ensure a constant supply! The pot and copious amounts of well propagandized popular music lyrics will help, but we must exploit the rebellious nature of these beasts of burden to satisfy it, so we must make procreation an item of guilt, a forbidden fruit if you will, so that they take blame for their condition through guilt of their own sexuality - after all it was their decision to cause their current condition! Just think! The Power! All that cannon fodder! All that Factory feed! We the Uber-Rich can build and Empire! Complete with Flag waving, death and dismemberment glorified1 Just like ancient Rome! Let the war games and the profit taking begin!
Posted by Uncle B on August 21,2010 | 08:43 AM
the article is very interesting, I mean, I've never thought that something like that would be truth, But now I believe that human can do it whatever they want just if we decided to do in order to help more people. I have one question for you... What will happened in the future when people have the solution for their problems, our planet would be happy of you? or what do you think?
Posted by polasho on August 15,2010 | 08:58 PM
From ancient time surgery is always advanced doing good job in medical science. In India SHUSHRUT great surgeon who wrote book on surgery was very expert to change to defected organ and replace new organ. At that time no advance equipments not available till surgeon did very efficient job in surgery.Compared to surgery doggones and medicine did not progressed.. Surgery is is easy then doggones and medicine.
Posted by Ramesh Raghuvanshi on August 10,2010 | 02:32 AM
Interesting article, I was actually trying to find a way to remove some old tattoos and was wondering if this would work for me. I saw on television a couple of days ago where a popular entertainer had most of his bodywork removed, and I believe he mentioned this company.
Posted by tommy on August 6,2010 | 11:17 AM
It is a very interesting method of help people in the future and the most important is that they produce the bladder from the damaged organ not being necessary to have stem cell.
Posted by Victor on August 5,2010 | 06:04 PM
This amazing! , only 20 years , I feel scared and proud about the scients, It'll be the best discover for the humanity.
Posted by jorge on August 3,2010 | 12:33 PM
There will be lots of red tapes with the FDA and congress to make this legal and available for the public...you know what i am talking about. cuts the profit of big corps getting away with treatments for chronic illnesses of all sorts.Very interesting paper. thanks Smithsonian 40th Anniversay.
Posted by SAM REYES on July 22,2010 | 07:37 PM
For Monika, we do not give out contact information for our writers or for the subjects of our articles, but we are always very happy to forward mail to them. You may send an email to Gretchen Vogel at the above address and we will get it to her right away. lettersed@si.edu
Posted by lettersed on July 21,2010 | 02:29 PM
Very Interesting article; can I get Gretchen Vogel's email ID?
Posted by Monika on July 19,2010 | 01:13 AM
+ View All Comments