
Laboratory-grown vaginas implanted in patients - ca98am79
http://www.kurzweilai.net/laboratory-grown-vaginas-implanted-in-patients
======
Shinkei
Physician here. I read this paper when it was posted on Reddit a few days ago
and it was very impressive.

I'll link to the discussion because the top comment was comprehensive and
summarizes the published article:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/22qhob/laboratorygr...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/22qhob/laboratorygrown_vaginas_implanted_in_patients/)

To address questions of how this can be applied to other organs, growing
tissue like a trachea or skin is becoming easier. They grow the cells on a
scaffold and then you have a tissue. Organs are much more complex and a penis
is an organ. We are not at that level of sophistication to grow an entire,
functional organ ex-vivo, at least for human use.

~~~
travoltaj
Do you have any insight into what would be the effect of this on Sex
Reassignment Surgeries?

~~~
Shinkei
I wish I did. It's by no means an area of expertise for me, but I would guess
that this technique is extremely expensive and will remain limited--at least
for the short term--to use in cases of genetic females that require
replacement of their vagina due to its congenital absence of loss from
cancer/injury.

The location of blood vessels, nerves, etc. is different in genetic male vs.
female and may require a totally different approach.

------
51Cards
Sex industry jokes aside it has been amazing to watch this field of research
advance. While still limited to relatively simple structures (tracheas,
vaginas, cartilage, etc.) this is helping actual patients now, not just lab
demos. Imagine when we can grow a new eye, kidney, lung, or heart.

I love what our industry does with technology but to me it still pales in
comparison with things like bio-engineering. Perhaps that's just my
perspective.

EDIT: Attaching a bit of a personal outlook. I am about a month away from
having a tumor removed and the primary surgery doesn't bother me as much as
the reconstruction process that will be required after. Having my own tissues
grown to fill in the hole would definitely change my perspective.

~~~
trhway
> Imagine when we can grow a new eye, kidney, lung, or heart.

Imagine that we can grow _better_ eye, kidney, ... extra eye, kidney...

~~~
jksmith
Huge ramifications for religion. Thinking of Mark 8:22. To know God, you must
become... We have to be ok with this at some point.

~~~
mangeletti
Who's Mark 8? Also, which God? Are you talking about a specific novel or just
general gnosticism or mythology?

~~~
jksmith
That's a bible verse describing Jesus making a blind man see. Point is,
knowing God better is apparently of value to religious Jews and Christians.
Biblical study can serve this effort. If it (knowing God) really is important
to believers, then they have to consider how science plays a role in that
effort as well, except that what science offers may not be nearly as
satisfying in a traditional religious sense.

~~~
hnriot
What beautiful irony, the bible itself extols the value in "knowing god" \-
for which I will read, knowing the natural world. Yet when anyone tries to do
that, they very often end up being persecuted by the very same church.

Not that any of this Mark nonsense makes any difference in the real world.
Aside from contributing to huge death tolls across the world in the name of
minor semantic difference in reading, religion adds absolutely no value to
advances in medicine.

In another lovely irony, the eye is one of the single most convincing pieces
of evidence for the non-existence of god! Why, otherwise, would "he" have
bothered to create a blind spot.

If we could all just stop with this outdated nonsense and focus on the actual
problems the world faces, like climate change and overpopulation instead of
worrying about which particular form of doctrine to pick we might as a species
stand a chance.

~~~
sdegutis
> _In another lovely irony, the eye is one of the single most convincing
> pieces of evidence for the non-existence of god! Why, otherwise, would "he"
> have bothered to create a blind spot._

So we could learn to trust in Him and stop relying entirely on ourselves.

~~~
hnriot
haha! what does that even mean - that's just typical religious mumbo jumbo.
It's by relying in "HIM" that we have the blind spot. If "He" is so capable
wouldn't he have thought of a better way to connect the optic nerve, like
evolution did in other species? I know I can't win an argument using logic
with a zealot, but seriously, let's stop with the "trust in him" claptrap.

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tokenadult
The journal _The Lancet,_ which published the peer-reviewed case report[1] on
the latest news commented on in the submission here, makes available the full
text of a commentary article from 2011[2] about the work of the same doctor,
who has worked on several kinds of replacement human organs.

My alma mater university is one of several centers around the world of
research on growing human tissues on spatial matrices of various kinds to grow
replacement organ parts (e.g., heart valves) or organs (e.g., tracheae).[3] I
had the pleasure of touring one of the labs here with one of my children, and
the researchers in the lab said the research involves experimenting with
different materials to form the matrix on which the human cells grow, and of
course learning what three-dimensional form of the matrix will produce the
best replacement part, with plenty of other issues to research besides. This
path of research is one of the reasons why I think it is quite plausible that
incremental improvements in life expectancy at middle age and old age, which
have been steady throughout my lifetime,[4] will continue as each reader of
Hacker News reaches middle age and old age.

[1] Abstract of "Tissue-engineered autologous vaginal organs in patients: a
pilot cohort study"

[http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(14\)60542-0/abstract)

[2]
[http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(11\)61600-0/fulltext)

[3] [http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-
releases/2010/UR_CONTENT_17680...](http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-
releases/2010/UR_CONTENT_176803.html)

[4]
[http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....](http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity.aspx)

[http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...](http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box/scientificamerican0912-54_BX1.html)

~~~
graeham
The work behind this is the result of a huge effort, starting 20-30 years ago.
Some people had given up on the promise of tissue engineering - one of my
mentors suggested just over a year ago to me that the field was a poor choice
to start a career in due to too many researchers and not enough progress. Its
a very active field of research, and practically every university with a life
sciences or bioengineering department will be doing some sort of work on it.

Thanks for posting the journal links.

We're not done yet. Most of the currently feasible organs are relatively
simple in geometry and homogenety. More complex organs like the kidneys,
liver, and espessially brain are probably exponentially harder to make. I
personally think we'll have nanotechnologies and regenerative techniques that
will leap-frog lab-grown organs before we are making more complex organs
(which will be the desired approach unless, as in these cases, the organ is
absent). A major disadvantage of lab-grown organs is they still need major
surgery to implant.

I also think we will soon find (if we haven't already) that the limit on human
lifetime and quality is from diet and excercise, and that these approaches get
much more gains per dollar. We will soon find (if we haven't already) that
health is limited by resources, not science. Prevention before intervention.

(PhD student in Bioengineering. I don't work in tissue engineering but most of
the people in my office do.)

~~~
ansible
_More complex organs like the kidneys, liver, [...]_

Interesting. I was under the impression that the liver was going to be one of
the easier ones, due to its own ability to regenerate. That's not to say that
it's going to just automatically hook up the bile duct and such...

~~~
xerophtye
do even need to create artificial livers? i thought liver transplant was easy
thanks to its regeneration. Of course you can't simply do the same thing with
vaginas... hence the need for engineered ones

~~~
ansible
_do even need to create artificial livers?_

There's still the issue of having to take immune system suppressing drugs, and
rejection in general. Its less of an issue for the donor (though it is still
major surgery) because the donor's liver will regrow and be back to full
function.

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Pitarou
I'm curious to know whether this could be offered to M->F transsexuals.

~~~
Kabacaru
I think this technology might be even more useful for trans men, where unlike
trans women there's less flesh available to sculpt the structures you want.

~~~
peterwwillis
Using skin grafts and prosthetics they can already create the structures they
want, so this would merely make a slightly more realistic looking structure,
but probably not make it 'functional'. There's a number of active processes
that would have to be reproduced, and I doubt there's sufficient existing
wiring/processes in place to create the same effects. If you just don't have
the wiring, it's difficult to make it work organically. But I can completely
believe it will be possible in the future to create synthetic pumps to induce
erection, and redirecting female ejaculation through the phallus should be
simple enough.

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hyp0
While an artifical ear or eye has practical benefits, genitials might mean
more to the recipients. Hard to tell: which would you rather go without?

It mentions that nerves grew into the structure, but doesn't explicitly state
how well feeling was restored.

Restoring the related organs, uterus, fallopian tubes and especially the eggs
themselves, still seems like science-fiction - at least, for now.

~~~
ijk
There's a cultural bias against medical treatment for stuff that is less
visible or critical. There's a general consensus that things like eyes or legs
are useful, even though surveys of paraplegic patients report that partial
restoration of genital sensation is more meaningful to them than walking.

Fewer people think about less obvious senses like _tasting_ and _smelling_, to
the point that it can be difficult to get the condition taken seriously, even
though complete loss of smell can be highly traumatic.

~~~
cdjk
It's interesting that you should mention smell, since I was born without a
sense of smell - the term is anosmia. It is very poorly studied, and most
studies deal with people who lose their sense of smell due to neurological
diseases or head trauma.

In my case it's clearly genetic (my mom and her dad both can't smell), and
almost no one studies it. From what I've read I'd much rather be born without
a sense of smell than lose it, since that can be very traumatic.

~~~
ijk
I was specifically thinking of anosmia and ageusia. There are many invisible
disabilities that most people aren't aware of; anosmia is one of the ones
where most people who don't have the issue don't even _see_ why it might be a
problem until they've really thought about it.

Couple of articles about or by people who have experienced the loss:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2008/07/the_nose_that_never_knows.html)

[http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/life-
withou...](http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/life-without-a-
sense-of-smell-20110217-1axu9.html)

~~~
cdjk
Anosmia is much more serious when it's the result of trauma or some other
disease - it makes food taste radically different, and is likely to cause
depression. That said, I've never had a sense of smell, so I don't know what
I'm missing. And the world is much less smell-focused than vision or hearing,
so if you have to lose a sense, smell is near the top of the list.

~~~
ijk
Sounds like for you it's a drawback but not a trauma. It's also not a problem
I have personal experience with, though I have with others.

I guess my point was a lot of people hearing about traumatic loss think its no
big deal because you can still work without it and don't immediately make the
connection between "losing your sense of smell" and "losing the ability to
taste chocolate like you're used to".

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brianbreslin
Do you think we'll start seeing people with bad livers/kidneys/organs pre-
ordering new ones and having them frozen/stored? if i'm some rich 80 year old
tycoon with a bum heart, i could see myself having new versions of all my
parts stored for me at a lab for when i need them.

~~~
anon4
Then other parts of your body would start failing in interesting ways.
Interesting from a scientific perspective, but I'd imagine pretty horrible
from a human one. Your heart and kidneys don't fail by themselves, your entire
body suffers cumulative damage from mistreatment and it's just those parts
that fail in a terminal way first.

~~~
dragonwriter
Well, once we can solve the problem of the first things to fail, we can work
on solving the problem of the _next_ set of things that fail, etc.

~~~
orthecreedence
Or perhaps, when our time comes, we can simply die, leaving the world to the
next generation as it has been for billions of years.

~~~
dragonwriter
Sure, we can; but if we'd thought that way before we would never have
developed medicine. For some reason in every generation there are people who
seem to think that using the medical science they are familiar with (or just
slightly less) is okay and normal, but using anything more is somehow contrary
to nature. But using our mind to develop new ways to overcome the limitations
of our bodies _is_ our nature just as much as the failures of our bodies are.

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frozenport
Fun Fact: Laboratory-grown babies implanted in patients happened decades ago.

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undoware
As a trans woman, I'm very happy about this sort of advance, but I question
why I'm seeing it at the top of my HN feed.

A lot of people here seem to REALLY LIKE vaginas.

Just saying.

~~~
anon4
What kind of person doesn't like vaginas? Except gay men, except those of them
that do like vaginas in the aesthetic sense. It would be like not liking
breasts or abs or butts or legs or penises. I mean, you don't need to like
them sexually, it's just that, well, they're _nice to look at_.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I'm bi, and I think both sets of genitals look pretty ridiculous when not seen
through the lens of arousal. The rest of the body I can generally appreciate
aesthetically, but genitals are just weird.

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ChristianMarks
I want one.

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simsicon
lol the comment by cam44 in the post.

