Growing Hearts
- Thread starter Orleander
- Start date
This is a very new area of research that was found recently. It will take years to get this going to a point of public usefulness.
I think there is something we have to remember here. Cardiologists might take exception to this, but basically the heart is nothing more than a relatively simple pump. It is one of the simplest organs of the body, albeit a very impressive one when you consider how many pumps it performs over the course of a lifetime.
If ever a technique was going to be developed that will allow scientists to grow an internal organ in vitro, it was always going to be the heart. Other internal organs are substantially and significantly more complex than the simple heart. Most other organs have a very complex array of different exocrine and endocrine cells that produce all sorts of different hormones. They play vital roles in our homeostasis by regulating a variety of metabolic parameters. The liver is the detoxifying organ of the body; the kidneys are an immensely complex filtration system. The heart is just innervated muscle and it just pumps.
I just cannot see this simple technique of seeding cells into a organ scaffold working for any other complex organ any time soon, if ever. As a former developmental biologist I have an appreciation of the awesomely intricate developmental processes that form an organ like the liver and all its constituent cell types and internal arrangements during embryonic development. I doubt we will ever be able to recapitulate it in vitro.
I have read about it and was amazed!
I wonder if at some point in the future we would be able to grow whole new bodies for our brains?
What would the point be once you hit 90+ and your brain is rapidly going downhill? As long as it's healthy, yes - I can see that.
I'm aware of that, I was more thinking of people with terrible injuries or organ failure unable to lead normal life.
And maybe (I'm ignorant in this) some time in the future we could grow new brain cells and improve old brains.
I'm hoping that's their ultimate goal.
Haven't they already tried things like that with Michael J Fox? Seems like he had brain surgery and he's pushing for stem cell research.
That's awesome.
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what would you grow? I think I'd like a body suit of new skin. Kinda revolting, but pretty once I got it on.
