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There has been much hype about the future of 'grow your own' organs and life-saving transplants of 2030. Yes, one day we can have one, two or even three spare livers on hand in the local organ depot, just incase those shots of neat 'Livet don't process entirely as planned, or maybe a new heart should we happen to deftly avoid the tredmill for 30 years. Oh, the prospects... Yet, despite the promise of the next Great Advance of Culture that would occur when college kids don't have to give a damn about their organs anymore, and the less tantalizing savemillionsofpeoplewithneworgans thing, the growing amount of research in this field has yielded few major advances, and there are still innumerable challenges to overcome.

Two of these hurdles, though, have been cleared by researchers at the NYU Langone Medical Center, who were able to create a 'scaffold' (made from material from the groin of mice) on which the stem cells (cells which will eventually differenciate into the vital parts of the organ) could grow. This 'matrix' is especially important because it conquers two major obstacles still in the way of bioengineered organ replacement - namely, the formation of a 3-dimensional organ from a few cells on a petri dish, and transplant rejection.

Geoffrey Gurtner, M.D., is a senior researcher involved in the work. To prove that this technique was viable, he and his team had to first demonstrate that the 'expandable pieces of tissue (called free flaps), could be sustained in the laboratory.' They first took a piece of tissue that contained a little bit of each of the more vital components of the body - blood vessels, adipose tissue and skin, from mice. They kept the tissue alive by feeding it nutrients and oxygen and 'seeded' the piece of tissue with stem cells. The whole contraption was then put back into the mouse, where the stem cells grew on their own and were, more importantly, not attacked by the mouses' immune system (ie. not rejected). This finding suggests that had those cells been on their way to organdome before transplant, the organ would have 'taken hold' in the body and would have been safe from the massive immune response that plagues many donor treatments today. These techniques show that we may one day take our own living tissue, extract it and use it as a scaffolding for stem cell cultures to form new tissue and, eventually, 'architecturally sound' organs. Research continues.

Nathan Beck (4)