Dynaverse.net
Off Topic => Engineering => Topic started by: Nemesis on October 22, 2008, 07:09:58 am
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Link to full article (http://bobim.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=88&Itemid=37)
The Bernard O'Brien Institute announced a significant advance in tissue engineering when it revealed how scientists had created living heart muscle cells from human fat.
Scientists at the Institute became the first to convert stem cells from human fat into beating heart cells. The development has important implications for treatment of heart disease if repeated and developed in clinical trials. In future, hearts damaged by heart attacks or congenital abnormalities may be repaired with heart tissue generated from the patient's fat. Such treatment would eliminate the problems of tissue and organ rejection. It would also overcome the shortage of donor tissue because fat tissue is in plentiful supply.
First, the scientists took human fat tissue gathered during liposuction surgery. Then they isolated stem cells from the fat and treated them with a mixture of agents to encourage them to grow into heart cells. Scientists had known for some time that fat tissue contained stem cells with the capacity to grow into various body cells.
So the new thing will be "the liposuction wasn't to remove fat it was to repair my hear".
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Turning fat cells into heart cells. It has a nice type of symmetry to it.
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Yeah it does. Soreeyes and I find this very interesting.
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So if someone comes up to me and mocks me for being overweight, I can tell them that I'm just making sure that if I have a heart attack, I'll have plenty of fat cells for them to repair my heart.
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Well, actually it says they isolated the stem cells, and given the theoretical versatility of a stem cell, it could really be any part you want, so really you're (and myself as well) just packin' around a huge box of replacement parts. Sucks for all those that didn't have the foresight to bloat up, doesn't it. ;)
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Well, actually it says they isolated the stem cells, and given the theoretical versatility of a stem cell, it could really be any part you want, so really you're (and myself as well) just packin' around a huge box of replacement parts. Sucks for all those that didn't have the foresight to bloat up, doesn't it. ;)
Hey, you made me smile!!! Let's go have some pizza and that new beer that doctors recommend!!