http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/11/lab-grown-vaginas-successfully-implanted-in-girls-in-tissue-engineering-first/?tid=hp_mm
Essentially, four females with a disease that prevented formation of their sexual organs, got lab grown vaginas (made from their own cells) implanted into them. So, as long as everything continues to go well, they are now able to have children!
This is, I think, one of the first times a organ that was grown in the lab is able to be successfully transplanted. Ahh the implications of this research!
4 Responses to GUYS!! SCIENCE!!
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Wow, that’s incredible! Just read the article, and everything does really seem to be working out well.
This is amazing, especially since the surgeries happened 6-9 years ago and there are no adverse complications after all that time!
I saw this too (only from the BBC because I have awesome widgets on my phone)! I think only two of the women were candidates for future pregnancy because it required their tubes are all hooked up (which was not the case in the other two).
This is amazing! I remember reading about Dr. Atala in my stem cell class, and he has like this whole legacy on tissue engineering and autologous organ transplants – has worked on bladder reconstruction and transplantation, and if I remember correctly building a heart in the lab, among other things. The guy who got a bladder transplant is now a college student at UConn! Amazing, amazing stuff – I think what is also really interesting is the nature of the cells that he grows in. I always feel like they are very vague when describing the building and constructing process. I am personally curious to know how they grew and cultured cells (they don’t seem to be stem cells) and grew sufficient amounts to paste/transfer into a scaffold, because at least in stem cell fields, the first obstacle is to understand what factors will push an ES or iPS cell towards differentiating fully towards a specific lineage, and the second obstacle is create biologically relevant amounts of those differentiated cells for transplant*.
*That being said, I think that stem cell research is now moving in another direction because of the potential risks of transplantation and tumorigenesis. This is why I am very curious about how Dr. Atala and his team are doing this! Because it seems that they have sidestepped these risks – but how? by using what cells and what conditions? The fact that these are autologous cells might sidestep the immune response, but what else is responsible for these successful transplants?