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MONDAY JANUARY 14 2008 6:44 PM

Growing Life from the Dead

Submitted by punk

Edited by punk

Tags: stem cells, organ growth

Published in the journal Nature Medicine, the results of a team of US scientists stem cell research have created a pitter-patter* of excitement among the medical community.

[They] used a process called decellularization to wash away existing cells from the hearts of dead rats while leaving the basic collagen structure intact.

They injected this gelatin-like scaffold with heart cells from newborn rats, fed them a nutrient-rich solution and left them in the lab to grow.

Four days later, the hearts started to contract.

Eight days later, the hearts started to pump.

Youre goddamn right; they brought a heart back from the dead. The process is already used to create small amounts of heart tissue and blood vessels. A whole heart seemed like the logical next step.

At some point in the future, the researchers hope that this method will be used to create new, healthy organs from the stripped organ scaffolds of pigs or human cadavers. Using cells from the recipients own body in order to reduce the rate of rejection, they could craft a new organ and transplant it instead of waiting for a suitable donor.

Go ahead and hurry up on that, guys.

* Bad pun: accomplished.

punk does have a slight fear of rat zombies.

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Comments

Colinism

Atlanta, GA

July 2005

JAN 14, 2008 06:56 PM

Fuck the zombie rats it's the damn zombie dogs that scare the hell outta me.

crispy

NEWSWIRE

Philadelphia, PA

JAN 14, 2008 07:09 PM

"How is this news?"

PatrickY

Vancouver, WA

December 2003

JAN 14, 2008 07:18 PM

punk said:
Four days later, the hearts started to contract.
...
Eight days later, the hearts started to pump.

Somewhere, Poe's corpse just shuddered.

punk

Phoenix, AZ

January 2004

JAN 14, 2008 07:25 PM

PatrickY said:

punk said:
Four days later, the hearts started to contract.
...
Eight days later, the hearts started to pump.

Somewhere, Poe's corpse just shuddered.

I didn't write it, chief, they did.

Subrosa

San Francisco, CA

July 2004

JAN 14, 2008 07:26 PM

What could go wrong!?!

IDGAS

Portland, ME

March 2004

JAN 14, 2008 07:43 PM

As a resident of NYC let me say gee thanks just what we need - super-rats

Postblank

New Brunswick, NJ

June 2004

JAN 14, 2008 07:46 PM

They did this a couple of years ago with a dog. He was only dead for a few hours though.