Texas Researchers Successfully Grow Human Lungs In a Lab

[big_dog]

Source: The Raw Story/ CNN Friday, Feb 14, 2014 17:12 EST

Researchers at the University of Texas have successfully managed to grow a set of human lungs inside their lab, which they hope will eventually lead to a breakthrough for organ transplant recipients, CNN reported on Friday.

The procedure, developed by a team at the university’s medical branch in Galveston, involved using a pair of damaged lungs already unsuitable for transplant. The first lung was stripped of its cells and served as what they called a “scaffold.”

“That’s why it’s so white and pretty and there’s no blood in it, it’s very pretty looking,” lead researcher Joan Nichols told KTRK-TV. “And then we added back cells from another lung that couldn’t be used for transplant but still had some viable cells in it.”

Nichols and her team believe it will take between 5 and 10 years to produce lungs suitable for human use. They hope to begin experimenting on transplanting their lab-grown lungs into animals in 2014.



Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/14/texas-researchers-successfully-grow-pretty-looking-human-lungs-in-a-lab/

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[Distant Quasar]

1. Awesome! Now I can start smoking again. n/t

[Brigid]

3. Bad idea.

[Aristus]

8. Quitting smoking will undoubtedly be a prerequisite for approval

for a lung transplant.

[bkanderson76]

2. Now if They Could Only Grow a Brain for their Gubnor...priceless

[KamaAina]

4. And their Senator.

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

5. Wouldn't work

Cruz's sense of self would reject it.

On the off chance that it did work, his father would call it blasphemous and rip it out in an exorcism.

[KamaAina]

11. But he could go back to Alberta and have the transplant paid for

[Sunlei]

6. "begin experimenting on transplanting their lab-grown lungs into animals in 2014"

/imagines a bunch of animals who live strapped in 'primate chairs'


Primate Chairs
http://www.plas-labs.com/products/animal-care-research/primate-chairs

[Igel]

7. I like this tech.

You can do the same with things like pig hearts. Reduce it to the basic collagen scaffold, one lacking all the antigens that make organs rejectable, then seed it with a person's heart cells. Ideally you'd be able to grow a replacement heart from the person's own tissue, with the right shape and function.

[mikekohr]

9. and the State immediately executed them nt

[Herself]

10. The elite's that pay for the research won't be allowing the likes of us to get in line for these

after the first human experiments are successful.

The don't have plans for us to be able to afford them!

[CrackerJohn]

12. I'll take a pair. I spent 7 years heavily smoking, quit in '85, but I still can't breathe well.

I'll even volunteer as a test case.