The heart is the third most needed organ in the United States with more than 4,000 Americans in need of heart transplants. Yet, only around 2,500 of those Americans receive new hearts and are able to have the operation. Even for those lucky few, they still face a big risk. You cannot simply place a heart into someone’s body and expect it to work, in fact, most bodies reject the new heart and react by launching this enormous immune reaction against the foreign cells. To create a solution for the organ shortage and highly minimize the chance of rejection from a patient’s body, researchers have been developing ways to create synthetic organs from the patients own cells. The use of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine in creating new organs …show more content…
For example, during decellularization, the detergent cannot strip away too little or too much of the material in the heart. If you remove too little, the body could reject the organ, and if you remove too much, you could lose vital proteins. Another issue is not being exactly able to mimic heart rate, blood pressure, or the presence of drugs in a bioreactor. So, the bioreactor will likely never be able to almost identical to the conditions a human body creates. Furthermore, Jason Wertheim, a surgeon at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine talks about the challenges during the recellularization stage. Wertheim questions “One, what cells do we use? Two, how many cells do we use? And three, should they be mature cells, embryonic stem cells, iPS [induced pluripotent stem] cells? What is the optimum cell source?” as there are so many different things to take into consideration when placing cells into a heart. Then, when transplanting a heart into the body, you must be wary of the integrity of the vasculature, as any naked piece of matrix allows for clots to develop. Those clots can often prove fatal to the organ, or even the person. If the heart manages to get through all that uncertainty and error, it still must live up to certain requirements such as being sterile, growing with the patient, repairing itself, pumping around 7,000 liters of blood a day, and working for a lifetime. As you can see, this method clearly isn’t perfect. There’s still so much more research and experimenting to be done, but for right now, it’s clear to see a beautiful and bright future for tissue engineering as we know
Stephanie Lee MS in Medical Device Innovation Personal Statement This past January, I had the most enriching opportunity to dissect and study the thoracic cavity of a human cadaver through the Advanced Cardiac Anatomy course held by the UMN. For the first time, I held a human heart within my hands, studied its anatomy, and was also able to closely examine the placement of a dual-chamber defibrillator. My company, Heraeus Medical Components, specializes in products for cardiac rhythm/heart failure management, so this was extra meaningful for me to not only see the leads, but also follow them to the sites of therapy within the heart. In a room of twenty-four cadavers, could I have somehow impacted any one of these patients’ lives?
The development of the artificial heart began in the early 1950’s. The initial prototype, developed in 1970’s by the artificial developmental staff at the University of Utah, allowed 50 hours of sustained life in a sheep. Although this was called a success, the implantation of the artificial heart left the sheep in a weakened state. It wasn’t until late 1970’s and the early 1980’s where the improvement of the artificial heart actually received attention as a possible alternative to a heart transplant. The remodeled product of the early 1970’s did more than just the 50 hours of sustained life; it enabled the cow to live longer and to live a relatively normal life, with the exception of a machine attached to the animal.
Brendan Maher, in his article “How to Build a Heart” discusses doctor’s and engineer’s research and experimentation into the field of regenerative medicine. Maher talks about several different researchers in this fields. One is Doris Taylor, the director of regenerative medicine at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. Her job includes harvesting organs such as hearts and lungs and re-engineering them starting with the cells. She attempts to bring the back to life in order to be used for people who are on transplant waiting lists. She hopes to be able to make the number of people waiting for transplants diminish with her research but it is a very difficult process. Maher says that researchers have had some successes when it comes to rebuilding organs but only with simples ones such as a bladder. A heart is much more complicated and requires many more cells to do all the functions it needs to. New organs have to be able to do several things in order for them to be used in humans that are still alive. They need to be sterile, able to grow, able to repair themselves, and work. Taylor has led some of the first successful experiments to build rat hearts and is hopeful of a good outcome with tissue rebuilding and engineering. Scientists have been able to make beating heart cells in a petri dish but the main issue now is developing a scaffold for these cells so that they can form in three dimension. Harold Ott, a surgeon from Massachusetts General Hospital and studied under Taylor, has a method that he developed while training. Detergent is pumped into a glass chamber where a heart is suspended and this detergent strips away everything except a layer of collagen, laminins, and other proteins. The hard part according to Ott is making s...
The uncontainable despair of the weeping and screaming parents entering a room full of body bags containing the altered remains of their children. In a room drained with blood and surrounding fridges for the maintenance of the ejected organs, everything seems miserably surreal(“Children Kidnapped for Their Organs”). This is only one of the discovered cases of the daily dozens of people killed for organ harvestation. Adding up to ten thousand illegal operations in 2012 which translates to hourly sales (Samadi). These abhorrent acts add up as crimes against humanity which are triggered by a numerous amount of reasons; in order to stop these constant atrocities we must uncover the root of the causes.
...velopment of tissues to replace damaged organs in the human body. Scientists have discovered for the first time how stem cells could be generated from embryo’s that were produced using adult stem cells.
A pittance for your kidney? It’s highly unlikely that anyone would answer yes to that question; however what if someone offered significantly more than a pittance? A thousand dollars, or perhaps even five thousand dollars? Although the buying and selling of organs is illegal on American soil, it’s no secret that the opportunity exists in other countries around the world. “In America, we have waiting list for people who are trying to get kidneys, there they have people who are on a wait list to sell their kidneys” (Gillespie). It’s quite incredible how a country cut off from western civilization, like Iran, has found such an innovative way to encourage organ donation. In American society one needs to “opt in” if they wish to participate in the
Organ donation is the process of surgical removing an organ or tissue from the organ owner and placing it into the recipient. The donation is usually made when the donor has no use for their belongings (after death) so they give the recipient the necessary organ/tissue that has failed or has been damaged by injury or disease. I agree with the idea of organ donations, the reason I support organ donations is because I believe that it can cause reduction on people dying and increasing the number of saving lives. Patients on the path of death from organ failure often live longer after receiving a transplant (Dubois,19). I am all for organ donations because in my opinion it’s a genuine act of love. It is a
Organ Sale is the exchange of human organs for money. This topic is very debatable because some people view organ sales as morally wrong mainly due to the view that only the wealthy will be able to afford the purchase of organs. In addition, many believe those living in poverty will be taken advantage of because they need the money. The selling of human organs can be beneficial to everybody and should be legal. By making organ sales legal it will give individual donors a better financial life, create a safer environment for those who sell their organs, make organ transplants available to more people and most importantly will save many lives.
Organ donations and transplantations have been successfully completed since the 1950’s and continues to be an effective way to “fix” one person’s body with the parts of another. Yet, as doctors became more successful in these operations, the number of people in need of an organ replacement greatly increased, but the number to donate them remained constant. As this problem arose, doctors aimed to find a way to increase the number of donors without violating anyone’s rights. What is the most ethical way to maximize the number of available organs for use? The best ethical solution to end the increasing demand of organs for organ replacement is to find a way to increase the number of available organs through means of living donors, deceased donors, and other possible non-human sources.
Is there any moral dilemma in making the provision of a means of survival for those in need mandatory? In the world at any given time there are countless individuals whose organs are failing them to the point of threatening their lives. In the world at any given time there are also countless healthy individuals and individuals taking their last breath, who possess what those aforementioned individuals need to survive. Given this truth, we would argue that any recantations about organ donation do not outweigh the proponents of organ donation. We propose that organ donation should be mandatory upon the death of an individual, and should be considered on a situational basis in cases where the donor is a living donor.
One of the most beneficial aspects to cloning is the ability to duplicate organs. Many patients in hospitals are waiting for transplants and many of them are dying because they are not receiving a needed organ. To solve this problem, scientists have been using embryonic stem cells to produce organs or tissues to repair or replace damaged ones (Human Cloning). Skin for burn victims, brain cells for the brain damaged, hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys can all be produced. By combining the technology of stem cell research and human cloning, it will be possible to produce the needed tissues and organs for patients in desperate need for a transplant (Human Cloning). The waiting list for transplants will become a lot shorter and a lot less people will have to suff...
Imagine waking up with a sharp pain in your chest; you’re having difficulty breathing and you’re dizzy. Your family rushes you to the hospital and doctors perform multiple tests. You later discover you have heart failure and will be in need of a heart transplant. Your doctor informs you there are not any compatible hearts available, so you will be placed on a transplant list, but it could take years before you would attain a heart. There could be a possible donor in a nearby hospital, but the family is unsure about organ donation. Donating organs has numerous positive effects on the lives of people and the advancement of medical research. Although myths have conquered the perspective of some individuals and institutions into opposing organ donations, the real truth is that they save lives, they improve the quality of people’s lives, and they advance medical research.
Organ donation is the process of one person giving an organ or a part of an organ to another person during a transplantation. Many believe it is a great process that saves a lot of lives every day. A lot of organizations and companies try to get people to really consider being an organ donor. With all of the persuading there is a lot of people are very willing to be an organ donor because they feel like they could save someone's life and be someone's hero. Organ donation is important because one organ donor saves eight people's lives.
Saving Eight Lives is Easy How do you feel when you have to wait for a long time for something you really want or need? What if it was something that you actually could not live without? The need for organ donation has never been greater. In the United States, there are I99,018 people on the transplant waiting list (LiveOnNY).
The field of regenerative medicine encompasses numerous strategies, including the use of materials and de novo generated cells, as well as various combinations thereof, to take the place of missing tissue, effectively replacing it both structurally and functionally, or to contribute to tissue healing[29]