Regenerative Medicine Gains Major Breakthrough

In recent times, extensive studies have been carried out by Researchers on stem cells and it's unique abilities. These research and studies have sometimes yielded not very promising reward, but in the year 2017 there have been breakthroughs that could possibly give the ability to grow an entire limb and organ or to repair damaged nerve cells.

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_{Image Credit: Reuters}

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Why Do We Need This?

Well, I think this is a very cheap question, as you don’t even need to brainstorm to provide an answer.

In the US, more than 16,000 patients needs a liver transplant and only about six thousand are transplanted every year, and more than 2,500 patients needing a liver donation die every year having no other live saving option. Therefore, with this analysis it is obvious that the need for a liver transplant is far greater than the availability of liver donation.

As for kidney, over 1 million patients live with end stage renal disease and over a hundred thousand patients are diagnosed every year. Despite hemodialysis has improved the survival rate of those with this disease, a kidney transplant remains the best option for sufferers, but the availability of kidney donors pose another problem.

Nevertheless, the increasing amount of persons diagnosed with diabetes mellitus type 1 has also proven the need for a pancreas transplant, with more 280 million patients globally.

However, transplanted organs also have it’s downs as the receiver immune system could reject the transplants. But stem cells have an incredible ability to adapt to the receiver’s body system.

The History of Stem Cells

In the year 1998, the first human stem cells were derived from human blastocyst at Wisconsin Primate Research Center. However, these discovery faced a lot of ethical issues in Canada, the US, Europe and other parts of the world, because these stem cells were derived from the foetus and umbilical cords.

Furthermore, for persons like me that believes that life begins at conception, we posed a major threat to this advancement, because this research utilised fertilised eggs and these eggs are destroyed during the laboratory processes.

However, after several ethical battles a few countries accepted this research, later more accepted in other to avoid “brain drains,” because some Researchers left their countries to countries that have adopted this research. Nevertheless, there were terms. Scientist were only allowed to use foetus and umbilical cords discarded by couples and with their consents.

Later on, several other sources of stem cells were discovered with less ethical controversy, and this was a progressive leap.

The Breakthrough

Scientists at a The Saban Research Institute of the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles using stem and progenitor cells have grown a liver which is the closest ever made liver that works just like a real human liver. It also produces albumin – a protein that a normal human liver produces.

Although, it doesn’t exactly look like a normal one, as there were some differences in the cellular structure. But with the emergence of a functional lab-grown liver, there is hope for more functional one.

“Based on the success in my lab generating tissue-engineered intestine and other cell types, we hypothesized that by modifying the protocol used to generate intestine, we would be able to develop liver organoid units that could generate functional tissue-engineered liver when transplanted,” said Tracy C. Grikscheit, a pediatric surgeon.

The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM), a leading $20 million research institute released a statement mentioning their focuses on two projects.

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_{3D Printed Ear Scaffolds. Image Credit: WFIRM}

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The first project is targeted at producing standardized “bioinks” in printing tissue and organs. The second is to focus on creating standardized "liquids" on which the printed tissue and organs(cells) can grow.

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_{A Stem Cell Grown Ear. Image Credit: Texila}

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These research would bring about new possibilities in the medical field that could lead to better treatments being created at a faster pace. Regenerative medicine is thus advancing at a rapid pace.

References

• Stem Cell Research
• Stem Cell Forum
• Nursing Times
• Futurism
• Reuters
• Wake Health

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Thanks for reading