In a report to the World Congress of Plastic Surgery, Morrison described the Australian breakthrough that came by inserting a special ‘chamber’ into the body that is specially designed to allow the growth of new blood vessels. “The research has found that the blood vessels within the chamber encourage tissues to grow,” Dr. Morrison said. “These tissues then begin to target, or recruit, stem cells in our body to develop in this chamber.”
Organs grown in the body have much less chance of being rejected by the immune system.
The technology could potentially eliminate the need to transplant organs from one person to another, he said, adding, “This development could see some types of organ transplants become obsolete.”
In other related gynecological news, a virus has been discovered that triggers some forms of breast cancer, raising hopes of a possible vaccine. Also, a gene has been discovered that triggers premature ovarian failure and menopause of a quarter-million American women annually.
Supposed we figure out how to re-grow anything re: human body part reconstruction. So where do we get the huge number of required stems cells from to give to people??
…I’m pretty sure that a stem cell culture, once it is differentiated into the desired type of tissue, produces more of that tissue thru cell division. You don’t have to have start with a big blob of stem cells the size /mass of the final organ and transform them all at once. Instead, you only have to transform a microscopic starter culture and then grow that starter culture to the desired size and shape. How this is done is the focus of all these research efforts like the one described here. As for a source of original stem cells from an adult human body, that’s a $64,000 question. I read something recently about baby teeth beeing found to have large amounts of stem cells. Routine sources for transformation purposes are still pretty much unknown.