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Luis Mendo
Artificial organs – grown in the lab and transplanted into someone’s body – have been on the horizon for some years now. They present many challenges but, if we can overcome them, they will open up the possibility for patients who need a new organ no longer having to wait for a human donor. They will also save health services money, eliminating the high costs that accrue during years of treatment, especially for some chronic conditions.
In 2021, we will see significant breakthroughs around how artificial organs function, while the technology used to produce them will take them one step closer to use in the clinic.
Scientists Create Whole Functional Thymus from Human Cells
Source: NIH, NIAID
December 14, 2020
Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and at University College London (UCL) have rebuilt a human thymus using human stem cells and a bioengineered scaffold. The thymus is an essential organ in the immune system, and the achievement represents an important step towards being able to construct an artificial thymus for transplant therapy. Sara Campinoti, PhD, a researcher at the Crick Institute’s Epithelial Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory, said, “Showing it is possible to build a working thymus from human cells is a crucial step towards being able to grow thymi which could one day be used as transplants.”
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Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and University College London have rebuilt a human thymus, an essential organ in the immune system, using human stem cells and a bioengineered scaffold. Their work is an important step towards being able to build artificial thymi which could be used as transplants.
The thymus is an organ in the chest where T lymphocytes, which play a vital role in the immune system, mature. If the thymus does not work properly or does not form during foetal development in the womb, this can lead to diseases such as severe immunodeficiency, where the body cannot fight infectious diseases or cancerous cells, or autoimmunity, where the immune system mistakenly attacks the patient s own healthy tissue.