New Research allows Miniature Human Livers to be make in Lab
Scientists at Wake Forest University Baptist Center have been able to use human liver cells to successfully replicate a miniature human liver. This huge achievement is a small step, and may lead to a full transplantation in an animal model. Benefits of making a liver will allow people who need organ transplants to receive one if there are none available. It may be used to test the safety of new drugs without actually experimenting on a human. One of the many hurdles of this artificial kidney will be the ability to grow billions of cells and make the sure the human body doesn’t reject the kidney.
The scientists used “animal livers that were treated with a mild detergent to remove all cells” thus leaving only the collagen. They replaced the animal cells with human cells. They were “immature liver cells” called progenitors and endothelial cells for the blood vessels. The human cells would be introduced to the liver by entering through a large blood vessel that fed into smaller vessels. Next, the liver was placed into a bioreactor that fed important nutrients and oxygen throughout the liver. During the week, the scientists were discovering that the human liver tissue was developing.
This new way of developing entire organs will not only be beneficial to kidney disease, but also bioengineering entire kidneys and pancreases. The bioengineered kidneys will prove useful for testing drugs because it will not involve an actual test subject. The way that the drug will be metabolized will be more similar to a human rather than an animal.
This article appealed to me because it shows the advances in human bioengineering. It is amazing how in the next few years, artificial organs could be developed. This is important because the need for kidney donors will decrease and allow drug tests to be done. I was also interested in this article because my grandpa has diabetes. If new pancreases are made, a diabetes patient could receive a transplant for the pancreas allowing the diabetes to be treated. Especially with many millions of Americans having diabetes, a treatment to cure the disease would be incredible.
The scientists used “animal livers that were treated with a mild detergent to remove all cells” thus leaving only the collagen. They replaced the animal cells with human cells. They were “immature liver cells” called progenitors and endothelial cells for the blood vessels. The human cells would be introduced to the liver by entering through a large blood vessel that fed into smaller vessels. Next, the liver was placed into a bioreactor that fed important nutrients and oxygen throughout the liver. During the week, the scientists were discovering that the human liver tissue was developing.
This new way of developing entire organs will not only be beneficial to kidney disease, but also bioengineering entire kidneys and pancreases. The bioengineered kidneys will prove useful for testing drugs because it will not involve an actual test subject. The way that the drug will be metabolized will be more similar to a human rather than an animal.
This article appealed to me because it shows the advances in human bioengineering. It is amazing how in the next few years, artificial organs could be developed. This is important because the need for kidney donors will decrease and allow drug tests to be done. I was also interested in this article because my grandpa has diabetes. If new pancreases are made, a diabetes patient could receive a transplant for the pancreas allowing the diabetes to be treated. Especially with many millions of Americans having diabetes, a treatment to cure the disease would be incredible.
posted by Travis Schaefer at 5:04 PM
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