04 April 06 - Transplant Patients Receive Own Cell OrgansRoger Highfield reports in the The Daily Telegraph, that first group of patients has received organs that were grown from their own cells in a laboratory. Dr Anthony Atala, the director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist School of Medicine, Winston Salem, in North Carolina has announced a long-term success relating to seven children and teenagers who had implanted bladders grown from their own muscle and bladder cells. He describes in The Lancet how he grew the bladders from cells taken from young people between the ages of four and 19 who had poor bladder function because of a congenital birth defect that causes incomplete closure of the spine. He is working to grow 20 different tissues and organs, including blood vessels and hearts, in the laboratory. "Dr Atala and colleagues should be praised for the milestone they have reached," said Dr Steve Chung of the Advanced Urology Institute of Illinois. He added that more work was needed to follow up this "promising" report so that the technique could be used routinely. Scientists hope that organs grown in the laboratory will one day help bring to an end the shortage of organs for transplantation, while avoiding the risk of rejection and infection that accompanies a donor organ.
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