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QUOTE (drewboy @ Jan 19 2009, 05:56 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Hey Bulgarian Doctor,
As a long time member of this board, I want to thankyou for all of your positive and insightful posts. Question for you being the intelligent man that you are
I read online about a lady who had severe damage to her windpipe form smoking, eating unhealthy, just living a rudimentary lifestyle. Doctors gathered stem cells from her bone marrow and were able to re-create a brand new windpipe, basically a new organ in itself. They surgically removed the old windpipe and inserted the new one and she was good to go. No pills to make sure her body accepts the donor, no trouble walking up stairs, shes able to walk long distances without getting winded ect.
I hear about how we will be able to grow hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers with the aid of stem cells. Do you think with all this exciting new technology, we will be able to extend life ten fold? When you have a bad heart, replace it. When you have liver disease, replace it. As with any of these organs, skins no different, its an organ as well, replace the damaged parts such as wrinkles, scars etc.
My question to you is, in say 10 years time, do you think we will have found the fountain of youth?
As a long time member of this board, I want to thankyou for all of your positive and insightful posts. Question for you being the intelligent man that you are
I read online about a lady who had severe damage to her windpipe form smoking, eating unhealthy, just living a rudimentary lifestyle. Doctors gathered stem cells from her bone marrow and were able to re-create a brand new windpipe, basically a new organ in itself. They surgically removed the old windpipe and inserted the new one and she was good to go. No pills to make sure her body accepts the donor, no trouble walking up stairs, shes able to walk long distances without getting winded ect.
I hear about how we will be able to grow hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers with the aid of stem cells. Do you think with all this exciting new technology, we will be able to extend life ten fold? When you have a bad heart, replace it. When you have liver disease, replace it. As with any of these organs, skins no different, its an organ as well, replace the damaged parts such as wrinkles, scars etc.
My question to you is, in say 10 years time, do you think we will have found the fountain of youth?
Hey Drewboy,
Thanks for the nice words.
I remember the case about the lady having her windpipe replaced with one grown from stem cells. I believe the procedure was done in Spain, where a team of doctors decided to use an extracellular matrix as a scaffold material for cultured stem cells. These cells basically grew into the ECM, taking cues from a variety of imbedded signal pathways present within the material that helped guide their differentiation and collectively shape their organization into the target organ. Prior to this they likely cultured the cells with specific growth factors in order to essentially stimulate them to function like the cells present in windpipe tissue.
It's a multistep process that while innovative still doesn't allow us to grow a complex organ such as a liver, kidney, heart, etc... However I am a certain that within 10 years we will be able to grow complex tissue types utilizing stem cells, genetic engineering and a myriad of technologies that are just starting to grow from the fertile soil of the regenerative medicine field. In perhaps another 20 years we may very well be able to replace our organs with decent copies of the original. 30 years from now these copies may be just as good as what we were born with and a half century in the future they may even be better than what mother nature gave us in the first place. But hey, I have no doubt that it could happen much faster than this.
I feel that the most promising technology of the future will be based on efficient and exceptionally advanced genetic engineering know-how. I fully believe that we will decode the mechanisms that allow animals such as salamanders to regenerate complex tissues/organs and utilize this knowledge to stimulate our own genes to direct our cells in a similar fashion. It's a well know fact that our genetic code contains all the information necessary for regeneration. After all, we were all once foetuses that grew from one totipotent cell into a fully functional multicellular human in a few months time. On top of this, foetal experiments have shown us that if you say cut a finger of a first trimester foetus, it will grow back without a scar. The question many researchers are asking themselves is how do we trick our genes into "powering up" this innate regenerative program within our adult bodies.
"Lost an arm? Grow one back! You have a bad liver? Go to your local genetic treatment clinic and get them to program your body to regenerate it in 3 weeks flat!"
I don't know the future year when this conversation is played out, but it's going to happen... And yes, I do think that we will be able to extend our lifespans to the point where death may become optional. Some researchers think we're near understanding the mechanisms that control aging, and others feel it's quite a ways away. Check out the World Transhumanist Association which aims at fostering the technological development that brings about immortality. Many distinguished scientists are WTA members so it's not as wacky as some might imagine upon initial reflection.
All in all, I think the regenerative medicine biotech sector is about to takeoff much like the personal computer industry took off in the 1980s. From here on in, the leaps and bounds of progressive development will come faster and faster.
All the best,
BRD
QUOTE (jksl @ Jan 19 2009, 08:52 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
QUOTE (Bulgarian R. Dermatologist @ Jan 18 2009, 07:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
The hypotrophic scar does not have to be removed. The stem cells are injected beneath the depression where they initiate a complex chain reaction that involves anything from differentiation to GF/IL production that contributes to better collagen production, angiogenesis and even some fibrotic tissue remodelling.
This sounds like it would help hairloss sufferers too. Are you aware of any clinics that use stem cells for treating hairloss?
I know there are research teams looking to use stem cells to stimulate normal hair growth. I don't know how far along they've come as this is not my area of specialization, but I'll look into this and get back to you.
