A First: Organs Tailor Made with Body’s Own Cells

During the spring of 2011, Mr. Beyene, an ordinary man in Iceland, detected a tumor about the size of a golf ball slowly expanding in his windpipe.

Despite countless surgeries and radiation operations, Mr. Beyene’s condition was incapable of being repaired. He ultimately decided to take a trip to Sweden, where he met creative doctor Paolo Macchiarini at the Karolinska Institute.

Mr. Macchiarini suggested a bizarre, but possible solution: to construct a new windpipe out of plastic and Mr. Beyene’s own cells.

At that time, this had only been tested on pigs, and was not a very popular or common approach to treat a tumor. However, strongly persuaded by scientific evidence, Mr. Beyene gave his consent for the operation, which proved successful.

Porous plastic was filled with stem cells- “basic cells that can be transformed into types that are specific to tissues such as liver or lung” -and placed in a biocreator, before inputted into Mr. Beyene’s body.

Since then, inquisitive doctors such as Mr. Macchiarini have hoped to reproduce organs in a more humanly way, instead of utilizing machines to create artificial ones, as is prevalent today.

For the benefit of the future, scientists and doctors are researching scaffolds, the compounds that hold cells in their rightful positions. The main objective for the future is to take a donor organ and replace the donor’s cells with that of the patient, or even inventing drugs to procreate the body’s own scaffolds and cells themselves.

Jenny Chang Orange Lutheran High School 10th Grade

One Comment

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