Sunday, June 27, 2010

Lungs, Grown in Lab, Function!



From Science Now via Dvice comes news of a development that has the potential to put the transplant business out of business. Well as far as live donors are concerned. What's all the hullabaloo? Well for the first time, rats are taking breaths and oxygenating their blood with lungs that are not original equipment. Said lungs are not mechanical nor are they organs from another rat, but LAB CULTIVATED!!!

Biomedical engineer Laura Niklason of Yale University are using a technique called decellularization which involves stripping an organ of all its cells leaving a fibrous scaffold on which donor cells can be encouraged to grow. Eventually you have a functioning organ that the patient's own body will accept as his own.

2 comments:

Dorn said...

Wow, absolutely amazing.

Beam Me Up said...

That was what I said the first time through Dorn. I was almost going to flip it off as something so unreal that it might be a joke, then the more I read all I could say was no way!!!