Anthony Atala: Growing New Organs
On September 15, New York Times had a story about the first successful implant of a tailor-made organ with body’s own cells. It reported that Dr. Paolo Macchiarini was able to create a new windpipe out of plastic and the patient’s own cells to replace one that had a golf-ball-size tumor in it. The patient, Andemariam Beyene, had the new windpipe implanted successfully in June, 2011 in Sweden.
Below is a Ted video below presented by Anthony Atala. Atlaa’s state-of-the-art lab grows human organs — from muscles to blood vessels to bladders, and more. At TEDMED, he shows footage of his bio-engineers working with some of its sci-fi gizmos, including an oven-like bioreactor (preheat to 98.6 F) and a machine that “prints” human tissue.
Anthony Atala asks, “Can we grow organs instead of transplanting them?” His lab at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine is doing just that — engineering over 30 tissues and whole organs.
video ted.com
You can read about the New York Times story at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/health/research/scientists-make-progress-in-tailor-made-organs.html?pagewanted=all
