When will they start growing organs? Growing artificial organs

Modern medicine can work real miracles. Every year, scientists are finding more and more new methods of treating various pathological conditions, and the latest technical achievements are of particular interest. Doctors are confident that very soon they will be able to treat diseases at a distance, undergo diagnostics of the entire body in a matter of minutes and prevent diseases using modern computer technologies. And such a seemingly fantastic idea as growing human organs for transplantation is gradually becoming a reality.

Today, scientists are conducting many active developments and research that relate to organs human body. Probably each of us has heard that in the modern world great amount people need organ or tissue transplantation, and no amount of donor materials can cover this need. Therefore, scientists have been developing technologies that can cope with this situation for several years. And today, active development of the method of “growing” organs continues. The body's stem cells, which are capable of adapting to the characteristics of any organ, are used as the starting material.

Artificial cultivation of human organs

To date, several technologies have already been invented for actively growing organs from stem cells. Back in 2004, scientists managed to create fully functional capillary vessels. And in 2005, full-fledged cells of the brain and nervous system were grown. In 2006, Swiss doctors managed to grow heart valves, and British doctors managed to grow liver tissue cells. In the same year, Americans created a full-fledged organ - the bladder, and in 2007 the cornea of ​​the eye was obtained. Another year later, scientists managed to grow a new heart using the frame of the old one as a basis. For such a scientific experiment, the heart of an adult rat was used, which was placed in a special solution that removed all muscle tissue from the organ. Next, the resulting frame was seeded with cardiac muscle cells obtained from a newborn rat. After just two weeks, the organ became able to pump blood.

Today, many doctors are confident that soon transplantation will no longer be an expensive operation for a select few; to obtain an organ, only a nominal fee will be needed.

Thus, over the past few years, a number of surgical interventions by transplanting an artificially grown trachea, onto which the patient’s own cells isolated from the bone marrow were applied. Thanks to such cells, the recipient’s body does not reject the transplanted organ; it takes root normally and adapts itself to new conditions. This operation allows patients to breathe and speak independently again.

Growing human organs for transplantation using another method

One more state-of-the-art achievement science can be called 3D printing of organs. This wonderful technique is carried out using a special biochemical machine. The very first experiments were carried out on classic inkjet printers. Scientists have found that the cells of the human body are the same size as drops of standard ink. If you translate this data into numbers, you get a size of 10 microns. And with bioprinting, ninety percent of the cells remain viable.

To date, specialists have been able to print ears, heart valves, and vascular tubes. Among other things, a 3D printer allows you to create bone tissue and even skin suitable for further transplantation.

Organ printing is carried out using a special photosensitive hydrogel, a special powder filler or liquid. The working material is supplied from the dispenser dropwise or in a constant stream. This is how soft or cartilaginous tissues are created. To obtain a bone implant, layer-by-layer fusion of polymers of natural origin is carried out.

Growing

British scientists have come to grips with the problems of dentistry, or more precisely, orthodontics. Today, doctors are actively developing technology for restoring lost teeth - it is understood that the tooth will be grown independently directly in the patient’s oral cavity.

At first, dentists will create a “tooth germ” using gum epithelium and stem cells. This manipulation is carried out in a test tube. Afterwards, the cells are stimulated with a special impulse that will force them to turn into the desired type of tooth. Then such a rudiment, being in a test tube, is formed. Only after this is it placed inside the oral cavity. There it is implanted and reaches the desired size on its own.

So, today there is not a single variety of biological tissue that modern science has not tried to grow. But, despite the successes achieved, it is not yet possible to replace them with artificially grown analogues - this is a matter for the future.

Folk recipes

Traditional medicines will help avoid the need for organ transplants. They can be used to treat a wide variety of pathological conditions, including dangerous kidney failure, which often requires a kidney transplant.

With this pathological condition healers advise combining equal shares of crushed lingonberry leaves, flax seeds, calendula flowers and tricolor violet herb. Brew a couple of tablespoons of the resulting mixture with one liter of boiling water. Boil this product for ten minutes over low heat, then pour it into a thermos for twelve hours. Take a quarter to a half glass of the strained drink three times a day, about an hour before meals.

The advisability of using folk remedies should be discussed with your doctor.

Ekaterina, www.site
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Medical scientist at work

For many years, scientists around the world have been working on creating working tissues and organs from cells. The most common practice is to grow new tissues from stem cells. This technology has been developed for many years and is consistently bringing success. But it is not yet possible to fully provide the required number of organs, since it is possible to grow an organ for a specific patient only from his stem cells.

Scientists from Great Britain have managed to do something that no one else has managed to do before - to reprogram the cells and grow them into a working organ. This will make it possible in the foreseeable future to provide organs for transplantation to everyone who needs it.

Growing organs from stem cells

Growing organs from stem cells has been familiar to doctors for a long time. Stem cells are the progenitors of all cells in the body. They can replace any damaged cells and are intended to restore the body. The maximum number of these cells occurs in children after birth, and with age their number decreases. Therefore, the body’s ability to heal itself gradually decreases.

The world has already created many fully functioning organs from stem cells, for example, in 2004 in Japan they created capillaries and blood vessels from them. And in 2005, American scientists managed to create brain cells. Valves were created in Switzerland in 2006 human heart from stem cells. Also in 2006, liver tissue was created in Britain. Until today, scientists have dealt with almost all tissues of the body, even growing teeth.

A very interesting experiment was carried out in the USA - they grew a new heart on a frame from an old one. The donor heart was cleared of muscle and new muscles were grown from stem cells. This completely eliminates the possibility of donor organ rejection, since it becomes “our own.” By the way, there are suggestions that it will be possible to use a pig’s heart, which is anatomically very similar to a human’s, as a frame.

A new way to grow organs for transplantation (Video)

The main disadvantage of the existing method of growing organs is the need for them to be produced from the patient’s own stem cells. Not every patient can have stem cells, and especially not everyone has ready-made frozen cells. But recently, researchers from the University of Edinburgh managed to reprogram the body's cells in such a way that they allowed them to grow the necessary organs. According to forecasts, widespread use of this technology will become possible in about 10 years.

The ability to grow a human organ in a test tube and transplant it into a person in need of a transplant is the dream of transplantologists. Scientists around the world are working on this and have already learned how to make tissues, small working copies of organs, and we are actually only a short distance away from full-fledged spare eyes, lungs and kidneys. So far, organelles are used mainly for scientific purposes; they are grown to understand how organs work and how diseases develop. But from this to transplantation there are only a few steps. MedNews has collected information about the most promising projects.

Lungs. Scientists from the University of Texas grew human lungs in a bioreactor. True, without blood vessels such lungs are not functional. However, a team of scientists from Columbia University Medical Center, New York, recently produced the world's first functional lung with a perfused and healthy vascular system in rodents ex vivo.

Heart muscle tissue. Bioengineers from the University of Michigan managed to grow a piece of muscle tissue in a test tube. True, a heart made of such tissue will not be able to function fully yet; it is twice as weak as the original. However, this is the strongest sample of heart tissue yet.

Bones. Israeli biotech company Bonus BioGroup used 3D scans to create a gel-like scaffold of bone before seeding it with stem cells taken from fat. They successfully transplanted the resulting bones into rodents. Experiments are already being planned to grow human bones using the same technology.

Stomach tissue. Scientists led by James Wells from the Children's Medical Clinical Center in Cincinnati (Ohio) managed to grow three-dimensional structures of the human stomach in vitro using embryonic stem cells and from adult pluripotent cells reprogrammed into stem cells. These structures turned out to be capable of producing all the acids and digestive enzymes necessary for humans.

Japanese scientists grew an eye in a Petri dish. The artificially grown eye contained the main layers of the retina: pigment epithelium, photoreceptors, ganglion cells and others. It is not yet possible to transplant it entirely, but tissue transplantation is a very promising direction. Embryonic stem cells were used as the starting material.

Genentech scientists have grown a prostate from a single cell. Molecular biologists from California managed to grow an entire organ from a single cell.
Scientists have found the only powerful stem cell in prostatic tissue that can grow into an entire organ. Such cells turned out to be slightly less than 1% of total number. In the study, 97 mice were transplanted with such a cell under the kidney, and 14 of them grew a full-fledged prostate capable of functioning normally. Biologists found exactly the same population of cells in the human prostate, although at a concentration of only 0.2%.

Heart valves. Swiss scientists Dr. Simon Hoerstrup and Dorthe Schmidt from the University of Zurich were able to grow human heart valves using stem cells taken from amniotic fluid. Now doctors will be able to grow heart valves specifically for an unborn child if he has heart defects in his embryonic state.

Auricle. Using stem cells, scientists grew. The experiment was carried out by researchers from the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University under the direction of Thomas Cervantes.

Leather. Scientists from the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and the university children's hospital of this city were for the first time able to grow human skin in the laboratory, permeated with blood and lymphatic vessels. The resulting skin flap is able to almost completely perform the function healthy skin for burns, surgical defects or skin diseases.

Pancreas. Scientists have created for the first time capable of producing insulin. Another attempt to cure type I diabetes.

Kidneys. Scientists from the Australian University of Queensland have learned to grow artificial kidneys from skin stem cells. So far these are only small organoids measuring 1 cm, but in structure and functioning they are almost identical to the kidneys of an adult.

Many diseases, including life-threatening ones, are associated with disturbances in the functioning of a specific organ (for example, renal failure, heart failure, diabetes mellitus, etc.). Not in all cases these disorders can be corrected using traditional pharmacological or surgical interventions.

This article provides information on existing achievements in the cultivation of biological organs.

There are a number of alternative ways to restore organ function to patients in case of serious damage:

Stimulation of regeneration processes in the body. In addition to pharmacological effects, the practice uses the procedure of introducing stem cells into the body, which have the ability to transform into full-fledged functional cells of the body. Positive results have already been obtained in the treatment of a wide variety of diseases using stem cells, including the most common diseases in society, such as heart attacks, strokes, neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes and others. However, it is clear that this method of treatment is applicable only to eliminate relatively minor organ damage.
Replenishment of organ functions using devices of non-biological origin. These can be large devices to which patients are connected for a certain time (for example, hemodialysis machines for renal failure). There are also models of wearable devices, or devices implanted inside the body (there are options to do this while leaving the patient’s own organ, however, sometimes it is removed and the device completely takes over its functions, as is the case with the AbioCor artificial heart). In some cases, such devices are used while waiting for the required donor organ to become available. So far, non-biological analogues are significantly inferior in perfection to natural organs.
Use of donor organs. Donor organs, transplanted from one person to another, are already widely and sometimes successfully used in clinical practice. However, this direction faces a number of problems, such as a serious shortage of donor organs, the problem of the reaction of rejection of a foreign organ by the immune system, etc. There have already been attempts to transplant animal organs into humans (this is called xenotransplantation), but so far the success in using this method is modest and it has not been implemented in practice. However, research is underway to improve the efficiency of xenotransplantation, for example through genetic modification.
Growing organs. Organs can be grown artificially both in the human body and outside the body. In some cases, it is possible to grow an organ from the cells of the person to whom it is going to be transplanted. A number of methods have been developed for growing biological organs, for example, using special devices that operate on the principle of a 3D printer. The direction under consideration includes a proposal for the possibility of growing, to replace a damaged human body with a preserved brain, independently developing organism, clone - “plants” (with the ability to think disabled).
Among the four listed options for solving the problem of organ failure, growing them may be the most natural way for the body to recover from major damage.

Achievements and prospects in growing individual organs for medical needs

Tissue Growing

Growing simple tissues is a technology that already exists and is used in practice.

Leather

Restoring damaged skin areas is already part of clinical practice. In some cases, methods are used to regenerate the skin of the person himself, for example, a burn victim, through special influences. This is, for example, developed by R.R. Rakhmatullin bioplastic material hyamatrix, or biocol, developed by a team led by B.K. Gavrilyuk. Special hydrogels are also used to grow skin at the burn site.

Methods for printing fragments of skin tissue using special printers are also being developed. The creation of such technologies is carried out, for example, by developers from the American centers for regenerative medicine AFIRM and WFIRM.

Dr. Jorg Gerlach and colleagues from the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh have invented a skin grafting device that will help people heal faster from burns of varying severity. Skin Gun sprays a solution containing the victim's own stem cells onto the victim's damaged skin. For now new method The treatment is at an experimental stage, but the results are already impressive: severe burns heal in just a couple of days.

Bones

A group of Columbia University researchers led by Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic obtained a bone fragment similar to part of the temporomandibular joint from stem cells seeded onto a scaffold.

Scientists at the Israeli company Bonus Biogroup (founder and CEO Shai Meretzki) are developing methods for growing human bone from a patient's adipose tissue obtained through liposuction. The bone grown in this way has already been successfully transplanted into the paw of a rat.

Teeth

Italian scientists from the University of Udine were able to show that a population of mesenchymal stem cells obtained in vitro from a single cell of adipose tissue, even in the absence of a specific structural matrix or substrate, can be differentiated into a structure resembling a tooth germ.

At the University of Tokyo, scientists grew full-fledged teeth with dental bones and connective fibers from mouse stem cells, and successfully transplanted them into the jaws of animals.

Cartilage

Specialists from Columbia University Medical Center under the leadership of Jeremy Mao managed to achieve recovery articular cartilage rabbits.

First, the researchers removed the cartilage tissue of the animal's shoulder joint, as well as the underlying layer of bone tissue. Then he placed collagen scaffolds in place of the removed tissues.

In those animals whose scaffolds contained transforming growth factor, a protein that controls cell differentiation and growth, bone and cartilage tissue on the humerus was re-formed, and movement in the joint was completely restored.

A group of American scientists from The University of Texas at Austin managed to make progress in creating cartilage tissue with mechanical properties and the composition of the extracellular matrix varying in different areas.

In 1997, surgeon Jay Vscanti of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston succeeded on the back of a mouse human ear using cartilage cells.

Doctors at Johns Hopkins University removed a tumor-affected ear and part of the skull bone from a 42-year-old woman suffering from cancer. Using cartilage tissue from the chest, skin and blood vessels from other parts of the patient's body, they grew an artificial ear on her arm and then transplanted it into the right place.

Vessels

Researchers from the group of Professor Ying Zheng grew full-fledged vessels in the laboratory, learning to control their growth and form complex structures from them. The vessels form branches and react normally to constricting substances, transporting blood even through sharp corners.

Scientists led by Rice University chair Jennifer West and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) molecular physiologist Mary Dickinson have found a way to grow blood vessels, including capillaries, using The base material is polyethylene glycol (PEG), a non-toxic plastic. Scientists modified PEG to mimic the body's extracellular matrix.

They then combined it with two types of cells needed to form blood vessels. Using light to turn PEG polymer strands into a three-dimensional gel, they created a soft hydrogel containing living cells and growth factors. As a result, scientists were able to observe how cells slowly form capillaries throughout the gel.

To test the new blood vessel networks, the scientists implanted hydrogels into the corneas of mice, where there is no natural blood supply. The introduction of the dye into the blood of animals confirmed the existence of normal blood flow in the newly formed capillaries.

Swedish doctors from the University of Gothenburg, led by Professor Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson, performed the world's first operation to transplant a vein grown from a patient's stem cells.

A section of the iliac vein about 9 centimeters long, obtained from a deceased donor, was cleared of donor cells. The girl's stem cells were placed inside the remaining protein frame. Two weeks later, an operation was performed to transplant a vein with smooth muscle and endothelium growing in it.

More than a year has passed since the operation, no antibodies to the transplant were detected in the patient’s blood, and the child’s well-being has improved.

Muscles

Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (USA) have successfully repaired a large muscle wound in mice by growing and implanting microthreads made of the protein polymer fibrin, covered with a layer of human muscle cells.

Israeli scientists from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology are researching necessary degree vascularization and organization of tissue in vitro, allowing to improve the survival and integration of a tissue-engineered vascularized muscle implant in the recipient’s body.

Blood

Researchers from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, led by Luc Douay, have successfully tested artificial blood grown from stem cells on human volunteers for the first time in the world.

Each of the experiment participants received 10 billion red blood cells, which is equivalent to approximately two milliliters of blood. The survival levels of the resulting cells were comparable to those of conventional red blood cells.

Bone marrow

Artificial bone marrow, designed to produce blood cells in vitro, was first successfully created by researchers in the chemical engineering laboratory of the University of Michigan led by Nicholas Kotov. With its help, it is already possible to obtain hematopoietic stem cells and B-lymphocytes - cells of the immune system that produce antibodies.

Growing complex organs

Bladder

Dr. Anthony Atala and his colleagues from the American University of Wake Forest (Wake Forest University) are growing bladders from patients' own cells and transplanting them into patients. They selected several patients and took bladder biopsies from them - samples of muscle fibers and urothelial cells. These cells multiplied for seven to eight weeks in petri dishes on a bubble-shaped base. Then the organs grown in this way were sewn into the bodies of patients. Observations of patients over several years showed that the organs functioned well, without the negative effects characteristic of older methods of treatment. In fact, this is the first time that a fairly complex organ, rather than simple tissues such as skin and bones, has been artificially grown in vitro and transplanted into the human body. This team is also developing methods for growing other tissues and organs.

Trachea

Spanish surgeons performed the world's first trachea transplant, grown from the stem cells of a patient, 30-year-old Claudia Castillo. The organ was grown at the University of Bristol using a donor collagen fiber scaffold. The operation was performed by Professor Paolo Macchiarini from the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona.

Professor Macchiarini actively collaborates with Russian researchers, which made it possible to perform the first transplant operations of a grown trachea in Russia.

Kidneys

Advanced Cell Technology in 2002 reported the success of growing a complete kidney from a single cell taken from a cow's ear using cloning technology to obtain stem cells. Using a special substance, the stem cells were turned into kidney cells.

The tissue was grown on a scaffold made of self-destructive material created at Harvard Medical School and shaped like a regular kidney.

The resulting kidneys, about 5 cm in length, were implanted in a cow near the main organs. As a result, the artificial kidney successfully began to produce urine.

Liver

American specialists from Massachusetts General Hospital, led by Korkut Uygun, successfully transplanted livers grown in the laboratory from their own cells into several rats.

Researchers removed the livers of five laboratory rats and cleared them of host cells, thus obtaining connective tissue scaffolds for the organs. The researchers then injected approximately 50 million liver cells taken from recipient rats into each of the five resulting scaffolds. Within two weeks, a fully functioning liver was formed on each of the cell-populated scaffolds. The lab-grown organs were then successfully transplanted into five rats.

Heart

Scientists from the British Haafield Hospital, led by Megdi Yacoub, have grown part of the heart for the first time in history, using stem cells as a “building material”. Doctors grew tissue that worked exactly like the heart valves responsible for blood flow in humans.

Scientists from the University of Rostock (Germany) used Laser-Induced-Forward-Transfer (LIFT) cellprinting technology to produce a “patch” intended for heart regeneration.

Lungs

American scientists from Yale University, led by Laura Niklason, grew lungs in the laboratory (on a donor extracellular matrix).

The matrix was filled with lung epithelial cells and the inner lining of blood vessels taken from other individuals. Using cultivation in a bioreactor, the researchers were able to grow new lungs, which were then transplanted into several rats.

The organ functioned normally in different individuals from 45 minutes to two hours after transplantation. However, after this, blood clots began to form in the vessels of the lungs. In addition, the researchers recorded a small amount of blood leaking into the lumen of the organ. However, for the first time, researchers have been able to demonstrate the potential of regenerative medicine for lung transplantation.

Intestines

A group of Japanese researchers from Nara Medical University, led by Yoshiyuki Nakajima, managed to create a fragment of mouse intestine from induced pluripotent stem cells.

Its functional features, the structure of muscles and nerve cells correspond to the normal intestine. For example, it could contract to move food.

Pancreas

Researchers at the Technion Institute in Israel, working under the direction of Professor Shulamit Levenberg, have developed a method for growing pancreatic tissue containing secretory cells surrounded by a three-dimensional network of blood vessels.

Transplantation of such tissue into diabetic mice led to a significant decrease in blood glucose levels in the animals.

Thymus

Scientists from the University of Connecticut Health Center (USA) have developed a method for directed in vitro differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs) into thymic epithelial progenitor cells (PET), which in vivo differentiated into thymic cells and restored its normal structure.

Prostate

Scientists Pru Cowin, Professor Gail Risbridger and Dr Renya Taylor from the Melbourne Institute medical research Monash have become the first to grow a human prostate in a mouse using embryonic stem cells.

Ovary

A team of specialists led by Sandra Carson from Brown University managed to grow the first eggs in an organ created in the laboratory: the path has been passed from the stage of the “young Graafian vesicle” to full adulthood.

Penis, urethra

Researchers from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (North Carolina, USA), led by Anthony Atala, managed to grow and successfully transplant penises into rabbits. After the operation, the functions of the penises were restored, the rabbits impregnated the females, and they gave birth to offspring.

Scientists at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, grew urethra from patients' own tissue. In the experiment, they helped five teenagers restore the integrity of damaged canals.

Eyes, corneas, retinas

Biologists from the University of Tokyo implanted embryonic stem cells into the eye socket of a frog from which the eyeball had been removed. Then the eye socket was filled with a special nutrient medium which provided nutrition to the cells. After a few weeks, the embryonic cells grew into a new eyeball. Moreover, not only the eye was restored, but also the vision. The new eyeball has fused with the optic nerve and feeding arteries, completely replacing the previous organ of vision.

Scientists from The Sahlgrenska Academy in Sweden have successfully cultured human corneas from stem cells for the first time. This will help avoid long waits for a donor cornea in the future.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, led by Hans Keirstead, have grown eight-layer retinas from stem cells in the laboratory, which will help develop transplant-ready retinas to treat blinding diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration. They are now testing the possibility of transplanting such a retina in animal models.

Nervous tissue

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, Kobe, Japan, led by Yoshiki Sasai, have developed a technique for growing pituitary glands from stem cells, which were successfully implanted into mice. Scientists solved the problem of creating two types of tissue by influencing mouse embryonic stem cells with substances that create an environment similar to that in which the pituitary gland of a developing embryo is formed, and ensured an abundant supply of oxygen to the cells. As a result, the cells formed a three-dimensional structure, similar in appearance to the pituitary gland, containing a complex of endocrine cells that secrete pituitary hormones.

Scientists from the Cell Technologies Laboratory of the Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy managed to grow a neural network, actually a fragment of the brain.

They grew a neural network on special matrices - many electrode substrates that make it possible to record the electrical activity of these neurons at all stages of growth.

Conclusion

The above review of publications shows that there have already been significant advances in the use of organ cultivation for the treatment of people, not only the simplest tissues, such as skin and bones, but also quite complex organs, such as the bladder or trachea. Technologies for growing even more complex organs (heart, liver, eyes, etc.) are still being tested on animals. In addition to being used in transplantology, such organs can serve, for example, for experiments that replace some experiments on laboratory animals, or for the needs of art (as the aforementioned J. Vacanti did). Every year new results appear in the field of organ cultivation. According to scientists’ forecasts, the development and implementation of techniques for growing complex organs is a matter of time, and it is highly likely that in the coming decades the technique will be developed to such an extent that the cultivation of complex organs will be widely used in medicine, displacing the currently most common method of transplantation from donors