
Whole organ 'grown' in world first - k-mcgrady
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-28887087
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scrabble
I'm donating a kidney to a stranger at the end of September. People seem to
think that it's crazy, but I tell them that if I ever need a kidney then
they'll likely just be able to grow me a new one by that point.

I've been following this stuff lightly for a few years and if you look at the
pace of technological progression, especially when it comes to things like
mapping the human genome, it's easy to think that in 50 years the face of
medicine will have undergone tremendous change.

~~~
Gustomaximus
Off topic, but what made you want to donate a kidney to a stranger? On the
surface this seems incredibly altruistic. It's significantly more committed
than what many people do and give away a portion of their income. I hope this
is not too personal but I'm just curious as to what thinking/events motivated
you to do this and how you went about organizing?

~~~
scrabble
I never knew it was possible to donate a kidney to a stranger. Was reading an
article about someone who couldn't find a donor and a commenter mentioned that
this was a thing. I signed up immediately.

I'm healthy, I only need one, and like I said, I figure by the time I actually
need one we'll be able to grow one -- but I suspect it won't actually come to
that.

In that light, it doesn't seem all that altruistic.

~~~
eru
It's still altruistic (since you still don't get anything out of the (now
smaller) risk), but probably not as much of a sacrifice as it used to be.

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exratione
There is also a paper from some months back that is open access, and thus
provides much more information for those who like to get at the source. This
covers earlier work in which they manipulate cell signaling to regrow an
existing thymus in situ and restore it to youthful activity:

[http://dev.biologists.org/content/141/8/1627.full](http://dev.biologists.org/content/141/8/1627.full)

This is good news for work on immune system rejuvenation, some of which is
very focused on restoring the thymus to youthful activity. Immunosenescence is
an important contribution to the frailty of aging. One of the issues with an
aged immune system is that for various reasons it runs out of competent immune
cells to tackle new threats. Means of restoring that population of cells
include (a) a more active thymus, (b) clearing out dead wood memory T cells
that are hanging around being useless, as that will spur the creation of naive
T cell replacements, and (c) plain old cell therapies along the lines of
culturing vast numbers of immune cells and infusing them on a regular basis.

A lot of this is very close to practical in the technology demonstration sense
today, but of course regulation is the big roadblock in most of the world.
It'll take a decade to get this through the very hostile-to-anything-new
regulatory system, and of course treatments will only be ever be approved for
very sick and damaged people. The existing regulatory system will never
approve a thymus rejuvenation procedure for someone who is "only" old and
immunosenescent, because that is not defined as a disease - that is a healthy
person who is merely old, and shouldn't be treated at all in the eyes of the
regulator. That must change, but the pressure for that will largely come from
medical tourism if the course of recent history vis a vis first generation
stem cell treatments is anything to go by.

Some years ago, transplantation of a thymus was shown to have benefits in mice
along these lines, restoring a supply of immune cells, and that was good
enough to attract more interest. Regrowing the existing atrophied thymus or
putting a new one in place has thus been on the agenda for a while, e.g. in an
ongoing SENS Research Foundation / Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative
Medicine collaboration. That is a more traditional tissue engineering
approach, with nanoscale scaffolds, a lot of work on cell differentiation
strategies, and so forth. The ability to rejuvenate or regrow the thymus
entirely from just a small population of cells, or a few altered protein
levels, has come out of left field as something of a pleasant surprise.

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eric_h
This is awesome and great for the future of humanity, but I was honestly
totally fascinated by the link[1] in the article referring to the partial
growth of human brains from 2013.

I don't know how I missed that when it happened last year, but I'm glad TFA
linked to it.

1\.
[http://www.bbc.com/news/health-23863544](http://www.bbc.com/news/health-23863544)

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pitchups
There is a fascinating TED talk about a surgeon who demos a 3D printer that
uses living cells to "print" a kidney:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidn...](http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidney)

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KonoHito
I'm a bit surprised to hear there is such a thing as lab-grown human brains...
sounds like high potential for controversy there.

~~~
netcan
I'm sorry you weren't supposed to have heard about it yet. My apologies.

Would you prefer to be reset to a pre-revelation state or would you prefer to
be shown around your vat?

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unlimit
Wow, this is great. I have a bad heart, I will be keeping a close watch.

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jedanbik
I wonder if this will disrupt the market for HIV treatment?

~~~
omegant
Reading your post, I realize that I don't know what you mean, but the first
thing that came to my mind it's that it's possible to bioengineer a new organ,
a virus filter (or blocker) that it's atatched to a vein. It's anybody working
at this? Sinthetic new function organs, blocking new virus, or toxic molecules
(plastics, pesticides, etc..) that can be grown outside the body and implanted
to work as a natural organ. Residues could be excreted in an encapsulated way
through the intestine.

~~~
bryondowd
I'm no expert, but I assumed that HIV meds damage the kidneys, making
treatment a balancing act of too aggressive treatment killing the kidneys vs
not addressive enough allowing the virus to do its damage. Being able to grow
a replacement kidney would allow more aggressive treatments. I think this
would be true of many diseases, though, not just HIV. I know my mother-in-law
has to live with the knowledge that the meds she takes to manage her bipolar
disorder may eventually be what kills her, due to kidney disease. EDIT: I said
kidney because the first couple comments referenced kidneys. Could apply to
other organs. The basic idea is that meds often damage organs as a side
effect, so being able to replace the organ opens up more possibilities for
aggressive treatments.

~~~
omegant
Thank you, I didn't know that HIV medication daages the kidneys.

