Vaginal Realm

Researchers at the Wake Forest University in North Carolina has recently stumbled into a breakthrough in repairing malfunctioning human organs. How? Organ Engineering.

Organ engineering may be defined as the infusing the techniques of math and sciences in order to tweak the natural structure of human organs for its improvement. Sort of like cloning but here only a specific unit of organ is replicated and is definitely not aimed to producing a functioning individual organism. Its goal is to repair and/or replace damaged componets of the human body as a step forward in healthcare that in current practice is rectified by organ transplant, surgery, or actual removal of the impaired component.

How does it work? Case in point: bladder engineering. Prior to this breakthrough, scientists remediate a defective portion of the bladder by taking a slice of the patient's intestine and using the same to patch the damage. This same century-old practice was also used to build brand new bladders for those patients who needed a total replacement of the organ. But since the bladder and the intestine are naturally designed to excrete and to absorb, respectively, this practice oftentimes lead to malfunctioning such as osteoporosis and increased risk of cancer and kidney stone formation. Organ engineering has rendered this practice passé by actually using cells from the same organ to propagate enough mass sufficient for repair, or propagate a brand new unit ready-for-transplantation. Healthy cells were extracted from the organ and placed in a culture in a Petri dish. After a few weeks when the cells have propagated, they are placed in a mold resembling the shape of the organ, and is left to grow even more until they entirely capture the mold's shape. Once the shape is solid, it is then implanted to the patient and will function as a healthy organ after a few more weeks.

I first came across this news while watching CNN last night. I admit I was in awe at this marvelous breakthrough...and since the organs were made from the patient's own cell, the ethical issue of "organ farming" is immediately stunted. An added bonus to this is the zero risk of rejection, as compared to organ transplants wherein the patient must first find a compatible donor, which oftentimes contributes great delay in the entire operation. The procedure is currently applied to seven patients in the US, and is yet to be granted legal license by the US government. Having mentioned that the procedure is not yet approved, we are yet to see the dark side of this breakthrough once commercialism steps in to the picture. Greedy capitalists may want to squeeze every cent of profit out of this new process at the expense of human healthcare.

What's next for this hullabaloo? Stay tuned.

Labels: random ramblings