A lot of things around us are made of plastic, but did you know that plastic commonly found in soda bottles can be made into a fully functional organ that can be transplanted into patients?
Human organ is one of the most scarce medical resources. For example, in Canada last year, nearly 5000 Canadians were on waiting list for organ transplant, and about 200 people died while waiting for one. What if YOU needed a transplant organ one day? Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to synthesize human organs from scratch? It turns out that stem cell research is the most promising solution to organ shortage.
So what are stem cells? Stem cells are cells that have the ability to self-renew and turn into specialized cells. Examples of stem cells include bone marrow cells and blood cells.
A couple of years ago, a patient named Andemariam Beyene had a tumor in his windpipe and was out of treatment options. His doctor Paolo Macchiarini came up with a radical idea: to build a new windpipe out of plastic and the patient’s own stem cells.
Video about Mr. Beyene’s plastic trachea:
http://youtu.be/_GyQWAiDu0w
(From youtube user NTDTV)
The tissue engineers first obtained CT scans of the patient’s existing trachea and tailor-made the plastic trachea to ensure it matched precisely. They then covered the plastic with the patient’s bone marrow stem cells and placed it in a in an incubator.
After two days, the semi-artificial organ was implanted into the patient’s body. The surgery was a success and Mr. Beyene is now breathing normally. In fact, he does not even need to take drugs to prevent organ rejection issues (which are common problems associated with donor organs) because his own cells were used to develop the transplant organ.
As of today, only simple organs like windpipe have been made from stem cell and transplanted, but the future of stem cell research is promising. It’s possible that in 10 years or so, complex organs built from stem cell will save your life!
-Stella Meng
