Word: atala
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...recent years, the curative promises of embryonic stem cells and therapeutic cloning methods have outshone other research, but these techniques are still too new and unproven to yield safe and effective treatments for patients. Atala's strategy has been to use already existing cells to create more practical solutions - for replacing everything from diseased heart muscle to worn out cartilage and failing kidney cells. "Every cell in your body is programmed to do a job, and our job is to put these cells in the right environment in the lab so they know what to do," he says...
Things in Dr. Anthony Atala's lab at Wake Forest University are not always what they seem. On one lab bench, surrounded by gutted printer cartridges, lie the inner workings of an inkjet printer. But this isn't the scene of some document-printing job gone awry. Instead, the printer has been jury-rigged to handle something much more extraordinary than ink - it now sprays tiny living cells into the three-dimensional forms of human organs...
...that's not all. Behind ordinary-looking incubator doors lie some of the most remarkable feats of modern science - pulsing blood vessels, beating heart valves, and delicate, swollen human bladders. For nearly two decades, Atala has been perfecting the science of regenerating human tissues - essentially, the science of building new body parts. "The concept is to use the body's own cells to make new tissues and organs for patients who need them," he says. "We have had so many advances in various fields of science - cell biology, materials science, and stem cell biology - and all of them are coming...
...most cases, that cell comes right from whatever organ is ailing, and, in the ultimate feat of personalized medicine, from the ailing organ of the patient himself. Furthest along in development are regenerated human bladders, which are already being tested in early human trials and which Atala has thoughtfully designed in small, medium and large sizes. Not far behind on the organ assembly line are heart valves and blood vessels. Atala began with the bladder not only because of his training as a pediatric urologist, but also because bladder cells are among the many that can be grown outside...
...cell samples of a patient’s bladder to re-grow the full-sized organ before surgically inserting it above the old one. “This is one small step in our ability to go forward in replacing damaged tissues and organs,” said Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at WFUSM and lead researcher, in a press release. While other simpler tissues, such as skin and bone cells, have been lab-grown, this marks the first time that a complex organ such as the bladder has been successfully grown and accepted...