by Hilary White
WINSTON-SALEM, April 4, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Complete urinary bladders grown from patients’ own cells have been transplanted and functioning for as long as four years, reports a group of researchers in the Lancet on Monday. Dubbed the “neo-bladders,” the new organs have been working fine and have significantly improved the health of seven young patients aged four to 19 who suffer from spina bifida.
Lead researcher, Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, said they are “very pleased” with the way the bladders are working. Atala led the work with Alan Retik at Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
The organs were grown from cells obtained from postage-stamp sized tissue biopsy, grown for two months and surgically transferred to the patients. The “neo-bladders” have avoided the problem of immune system rejection that is common with ordinary organ transplants as well as a host of medical problems found with other types of surgically constructed bladders.
Professor Atala said, “This suggests that tissue engineering may one day be a solution to the shortage of donor organs in this country for those needing transplants.” The researchers believe that the technique could be applied to creating more than a dozen different organs, including blood-vessel complexes, partial kidneys and perhaps hearts.
Embryonic stem cells have long been touted as the door to curing diseases and replacing injured body parts, but thus far there have been few concrete successes. The medical problems of immune system rejection, in addition to the overarching objection that use of embryo cells kills a living embryonic human person, has turned researchers attention to adult cells.
This breakthrough may help to lessen the demand for organ donation from living patients. The ethical problems surrounding organ donation and transplants have grown with the redefinition of death to include “brain death” in patients whose heart is still beating.
Traditional medical ethicists have said that such patients are alive and are only killed by the removal of vital organs.