How sweet it will be. The doctor has just diagnosed that
your kidneys are malfunctioning and may soon pack up altogether. “ Not to worry,” he tells you.
“I think we have just the right ones for you in our store. It will cost just
about N125,000”
Makes life more exciting won’t
you say? Scientists are promising more than that in different research
laboratories around the world. They are now working in various ways to create
spare parts for the human body. These technologies provide assistance to
individuals with physical disabilities and could also be readily available as
replacements for worn parts due to old age, thus increasing the human life
span. And they seem to be winning as news of breakthrough about different human
body parts being grown in the laboratory are gradually becoming the norm these
days.
Now, scientists at the
University College, London say they are focusing on growing replacement organs
and body parts which can be ordered or grown using a patient’s own cells. The
announcement followed reports that they have successfully grown a human nose,
the first ever in the world.
Led by Prof Alexander
Seifalian of the varsity’s Department of Nanotechnology and Regenerative
Medicine, the scientists say when the nose is transferred to the patient, it
doesn’t go directly onto the face but will be placed inside a balloon inserted
beneath the skin on their arm. After four weeks, during which time skin and
blood vessels can grow and the nose can be monitored, it will then be
transplanted to the face.
Prof. Seifalian is being
assisted by a Nigerian scientists, in the department, Dr. Adelola Oseni who
told the London Daily Mail newspaper that the nose being “manufactured” by his
team is expected to last longer than several other attempts in the past.
“Other groups have tried to
tackle nose replacement with implants but we’ve found they don’t last. They
migrate, the shape of the nose changes. But our own will hold itself
completely, as it’s an entire nose shape made out of polymer.”
There are several other parts
in the making. For instance, the journal, Science Translational Medicine
published research findings recently demonstrating the capability of
tissue-engineered vascular grafts that are immediately available at the time of
surgery and are less likely to become infected or obstructed. This means a
surgeon could easily obtain a new human vein off the shelf for use in
life-saving vascular surgeries.
“This new type of
bioengineered vein allows them to be easily stored in hospitals so they are
readily available to surgeons at the time of need,” said Dr. Alan P. Kypson, a
cardiothoracic surgeon, associate professor at the Brody School of Medicine at
ECU and an author of the paper. “Currently, grafting using the patient’s own
veins remains the gold standard. But, harvesting a vein from the patient’s leg
can lead to complications, and for patients who don’t have suitable veins, the
bioengineered veins could serve as an important new way to provide a coronary
bypass.”
Scientists at the Scrpps
Research Institute, La Jolla, have also successfully turned skin cells into
beating heart cells. Over the last decade, scientists have had increasing
success in converting skin cells and other types of cells into something
different, including heart and blood cells. However, Dr. Sheng Ding and his
colleagues at Scripps have developed a different method that bypasses this
initial transformation to the stem cell state. This is done by introducing four
genes recently discovered to reprogram differentiated adult cells to embryonic
stem cell-like pluripotency. As if the cell one day realized that it never
really wanted to grow up to be a skin cell, scientists could help revert it
back to its infant—or, embryonic— state so it could have another go at life.
In Stockholm, Sweden, doctors
successfully gave a 36-year old man a new trachea. The 36-year old African
native, Andemariam Beyene, also a Ph.D student, was diagnosed in 2008 with
tracheal cancer. Despite treating it aggressively with radiation and
chemotherapy the tumor continued to grow. When the tumour had grown to the size
of a golf ball and began to occlude his breathing, it became clear that
different measures needed to be taken or he would die. Trachea replacement was
the treatment of choice but they didn’t have a donor and time was running out.
So the doctors decided to make a new trachea from scratch.
Indeed, scientists have
reported breakthrough towards the production of human parts such as liver
tissue, kidney, pancreas, knee cap among several others. The question however
remains: Will the human spare parts allow man to live forever?
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