

U of M researchers create beating heart in laboratory - ingenium
http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2008/01/13/u_of_m_researchers_create_beating_heart_in_laboratory.html

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rms
When I see things like this and think that we are maybe 5 years away from
human trials of lab grown, transplantable hearts, I really hope that we're
going to live forever.

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ingenium
The biggest problems re going to be cancer, genetic problems that only arise
as we age, and perhaps most important of all, neurodegenerative diseases. The
problem is that our cells are pre-programmed to only divide a fixed number of
times, hence why stem cells help, but even they are limited. When this is
"fixed" so the cells can divide indefinitely, it tends to turn into cancer,
which is probably one reason this mechanism evolved in the first place.

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kirubakaran
Seems like nature got away with a bad hack. It slapped on an arbitrary int to
cap cell division and called it good.

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mnemonicsloth
oh em eff gee.

I heard Michio Kaku talking about something he called The Human Body Shop
--technology to provide _h. sapiens_ replacement parts-- on the BBC two days
ago. I remember thinking "What could a string theorist possibly know about
biotechnology that's worth broadcasting to two hundred million listeners?"

More than me, apparently.

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Kaizyn
This is quite impressive technology. Now they need to find a way to get more
than one heart out of a 'decellularized heart'. At that point, we won't have
any more problems with finding organ donations.

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ingenium
I don't think they can. The reason they use the "decellularized heart" is
because they need a scaffold for the cells to grow on. This has basically been
what's holding back growing organs.

They may, however, be able to use another mammal's heart for the scaffold,
such as a cow or pig, with the help of some genetic engineering. I read
something a while back about a group of scientists that genetically engineered
a pig so that its organs could be transplanted into humans. If I remember
correctly, a pig's organs have a salty layer on them or something making them
incompatible with humans.

