IPFS News Link • Science, Medicine and Technology
We're Closer Than Ever to Saving Lives With Livers Made in The Lab
• http://www.sciencealert.com, DAVID NIELDLab-grown livers could be saving lives much sooner than previously thought, thanks to new research, by providing some key functions of the organ without being a complete replacement.
That would mean these artificially engineered organs could prop up a failing liver or help those waiting for a transplant to hold out until a human liver became available.
A team drawn from several US institutions created small subunits of engineered liver tissue, that when implanted into mice with damaged livers were able to expand 50-fold and cover some of the functions normally carried out by the liver.
"Our goal is that one day we could use this technology to increase the number of transplants that are done for patients, which right now is very limited," says senior researcher Sangeeta Bhatia from MIT.