Stem cell biologist Takanori Takebe of Yokohama City University in Japan, and his colleagues have created human livers in a dish. After transplantation into mice, the liver cells hooked up to blood vessels and behaved like human liver.
Similarly, researchers Dr. Colin McGucklin, Professor of Regenerative Medicineat Newcastle University, and Dr. Nico Forraz, Senior Research Associate and Clinical Sciences Business Manager at Newcastle University have successfully grown liver in lab using stem cells from umbilical cords ars (“cord blood”), seen by some as a more ethical alternative to stem cells created from human embryos.
Researchers believe in few years time, entire livers could be grown in the lab and then be transplanted into human.
The process involves placing the cells in a Bioreactor (a device developed by NASA to simulate the weightless environment of space). The cells are situated in a growth medium that is constantly rotated, putting the cells in an endless state of free-fall. Ordinary cell growth in a nutrient medium in a dish does not provide a culture environment that supports three-dimensional tissue assembly. Epithelial cells without a three-dimensional assembly environment lack the proper clues for growing into the variety of cells that make up a particular tissue. Epithelial cells are the basic cells that differentiate tissue into specific organ functions. In a rotating Bioreactor, scientists can fool cells into behaving as though they are in a body.
This is a significant advance for the field of regenerative medicine.
It might seem like science fiction but there are already people walking around today with organs made from stem cells.
For more details visit :
http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/Artificial_liver
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/
http://www.yokohama-cu.ac.jp/index-e.html
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