Scientists Just Transplanted Lab-Grown Lungs into Pigs

Photo credit: dusanpetkovic - Getty Images

Photo credit: dusanpetkovic - Getty Images

Photo credit: dusanpetkovic – Getty Images

From Popular Mechanics

Scientists from the University of Texas Medical Branch just successfully transplanted lab-grown lungs into pigs – an exciting development towards being able to bioengineer lungs for humans someday, too.

To create these lungs, researchers first made a lung skeleton. They used sugar and detergent to remove the cells and blood from pig lungs, leaving them with a protein structure. They created four protein scaffolds, each of which was soaked in a tank containing a mix of nutrients. Next, scientists added cells from the recipient pig lungs to each scaffold, and let them grow over 30 days. When the lungs were ready, they made the transplant into four recipient pigs.

Within two weeks, the transplanted lugs began to develop the blood vessel networks they need to survive. After two months, the animals seemed to take their lab-grown lungs well, showing no signs of rejecting the foreign organs. Researchers will continue to study the effects of the transplanted organs long term.

If their work is successful, it could change organ transplation in the future. Currently, there’s over 1,400 people in the U.S. awaiting lung transplants (donor shortages means there’s always a waitlist). Researchers believe they could be five to ten years away from being able to transplant lab-grown lungs to patients in compassionate use circumstances (patients with life-threatening conditions and few other treatment options). Bioengineered organs could be an improvement from human donated organs: lungs grow from the recipient’s own cells are less likely to get rejected by the body, and being able to grow new lungs in a lab could put an end to organ shortages.

(source: Futurism)

(‘You Might Also Like’,)