First liver created through bioengineering
In America it was possible to create for the first time a human liver in the laboratory, this research will revolutionize the field of transplantation.
In the Institute of Regenerative Medicine of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem (North Carolina) has created the first laboratory in the liver. For the moment, the liver created by bioengineering, while maintaining all the characteristics of the human genome, is a miniature of it and the next challenge will be to transplant in an animal model to study their functions.
To recreate the liver tissue, the researchers used livers of animals and using the process of decellularization, have left only a sort of skeleton, and later replaced the animal cells with immature liver progenitor cells and endothelial cells that serve to align blood vessels, and then have the animal back into the liver. Even after a week had grown new human liver tissue.
Shay Soker, project director and professor of regenerative medicine, said: “They are important to the many opportunities that will give this discovery, but we are still at an early stage and there are still many technical barriers. We must determine whether these organs are safe for patients and we must understand how to grow once the billions of cells. ”
This finding may give new hope to patients who need to undergo organ transplants, and could be used as a test for drug safety.
