Bioengineering graft could lay ground for organ growth

It was recently discovered that a complex bioengineered tissue part can be grown from a person's own cultured cells. This is the first time that it's been created without synthetic components. Before, complex organs could be grown if it were provided a scaffold from a nonliving polymer. However, it seems that the scaffold causes a blockage problem in the blood vessels and the body can reject the scaffold. Todd McAllister has found a way to grow the blood vessels without the help of the scaffold. Fibroblast cells are taken from someone and a grown to produce a protein scaffold. Other proteins were added to create the lining of these newly grown blood vessels. These vessels seem to be successful for patients with a type of kidney disease. Research shows that these "grafts" remained functional after a few months after inplantation for five out of the eight patients.



I believe that this article is interesting because it is always exciting to hear about new bioengineering inventions that could be used in the future to treat various types of diseases. What's even more exciting is that in the future, organs could be grown from using a person's own cells. This means that no artificial materials would be used to grow cells in humans so that there would be less immune responses in the body. This could lead to major success in treating uncurable diseases, in particular, cancer.

Source:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17020-bioengineering-graft-could-lay-ground-for-organ-growth.html