« Back to blog

Boston Researchers Are Trying to Grow Human Organs In Lab

Heart cells from a rat in Boston lab. Photo taken from CBS.com

Ali Khademhosseini, a Boston based researcher, along with a team of 50 more at Brigham and Women’s are working on an ambitious project to use human cells to grow working organs in a laboratory according to CBS.

The idea is to eventually eliminate, as the article puts it, “one of medicine’s greatest bottlenecks: the need for donors.”

According to OrganDonor.gov, there are 113,030 people waiting for an organ, 18 of which die a day.

Fully functional human organs engineered in a lab are still years away, but the project has shown promise in tests that utilized the heart cells from rats. According to the CBS report, the cells “now beat in sync on their own, after several weeks of nurturing in the lab.”

The article goes on to say that, “The cells are grown in a gel-like substance on a scaffold which helps realign and shape the tissue under conditions that closely replicate development in the human body.”

It’s incredible how the world of medicine tops itself on a daily basis. It is my hope, should I ever die, that it’s from falling from a height so immense and all of my organs become readily available, right there on the ground, for the paramedics to rush to the patients in need. Or to the lab to re-grow and make me a super scientific indestructible version of my former self, whatever is more pressing when the time comes.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/02/16/boston-researchers-are-trying-to-grow-human-or...