Healthy Andy

Science gets some points this week for Awesomeness.  Researchers at Wake Forest were able to create mini livers from host tissue in the lab.

The itty bitty livers were only about an inch big, but were functional.  However, don’t start binge drinking in the hopes that you can grow a replacement liver over the weekend… they weren’t able to make anything nearly large enough to be functional inside of an actual human being.

Functional, meaning, did stuff biochemically that livers do, which is kind of cool, because organ transplant aside, you could use this sort of human liver tissue for drug tests and fun stuff like that.  But they still can’t make big grown-up livers just yet.

Still, this is a pretty huge step in regenerative medicine.  Organ transplant carries the major risk of tissue rejection, which is basically your body recognizing the transplanted organ as foreign to the body. 

The body really likes to kill stuff that’s foreign to it, it’s funny that way.  Normally, if that foreign thing is a virus or bacteria that’s trying to make us sick, we’re A-okay with the killing.  But, when that foreign thing is something we put there on purpose… well, there’s just no reasoning with the body.  The body just likes it some killing.

So when you go to the trouble of sticking somebody else’s liver inside of you, your immune system is gonna go ahead and kill it.  Unless you take immunosuppresant drugs, which as the name implies, suppresses the immune system and hopefully stops the violence.

Of course, it ALSO means that while you take those drugs, you have an immune system that’s weak as a kitten and can’t fight ANYTHING off worth a darn.  So get ready to be sick pretty much all of the time.

On the other hand, if you can grow your own organs, hey, it’s not foreign… it’s all you.  And now finally, we can stop the circle of tissue rejection violence.

How are they doing this?  It goes something like this.  They take an animal liver and use a detergent-like substance to wash away all of the actual functional liver cells, leaving only the collagen, which is connective tissue that acts like a scaffold to support the structure of the organ.  If you ever wondered what keeps an organ in some shape or another rather than just gushing all around the body cavity, collagen is the answer.

Then, they take that empty scaffold and add immature human liver cells and endothelial cells.  This last type of cell is involved in making blood vessels, which any growing young liver is going to need plenty of.

After that, they basically put in in the almost science fiction bioreactor, which is a tank that feeds the little liver oxygen and nutrients, and whammo!  The new liver starts to grow.

This process is very similar to how replacement bladders are also being grown (a washed-0ut scaffold of collagen, add some cells, bake in the bioreactor oven, hope it all takes hold).  It’s all phenomenal news… if you want to get a glimpse at what real game-changing technology in the medical world is going to be, it’s the field of regenerative medicine.

Now, I wouldn’t want to be first in line for one of these home-grown livers.  There’s no doubt going to be some glitches that will have to get ironed out (meaning, the first guys in line will probably die).  But keep your eyes on this technology, because it is going to change how medicine is done over the course of the 21st century.

Stay healthy!

Source article: http://health.msn.com/health-topics/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100266474

Just a quickie heads-up on some super-cool news from the research world.  Soon, those bones that you keep insisting on breaking will be able to heal much more quickly.

It’s pretty much modern day science fiction, which, of course = AWESOME.  Right now it’s just in the very experimental phase, which means they’re just doing it with mice, but still, it’s pretty impressive.

What they’re doing is basically using a similar mechanism that earthworms use to regenerate, but adapting it to work with mammals.  It involves using a particular funky protein that, when in high doses in the injured area, increased the amount of healing activity significantly… like 3-4 times more.

The guess is, those proteins are stimulating stem cells in the bone to multiply and differentiate (specialize from raw stem cells into actual bone cells).  The hope, obviously, is that this technique can be modified for use in humans.

The implications are pretty huge.  Not only are we talking about faster fracture healing times, but there could be a potential osteoporosis treatment in there somewhere as well.  And, it’s likely that the same procedure could be adapted for other tissue types, like skin (think of the uses for burn victims!).

Cool stuff, my friends.  Now let’s just hope they can make it affordable!