A REMEDY FOR DEATH

Previously here, I mentioned the New York Times three-part series “Body Builders”. In the  first of the Times’ articles, the focus was on using an engineered plastic “scaffold” as a base upon which to seed stem cells from a patient who was losing his windpipe to cancer. (All of the articles are by Henry Fountain.)

The second in that series, “Human Muscle, Regrown on Animal Scaffolding,” tells of an American Marine who lost a big chunk of muscle and tissue from his leg to a shrapnel wound. 

In an experimental procedure, a different  type of scaffold was used. This scaffold was not plastic, not engineered in a lab or factory. Rather, this scaffold  was what’s termed in the biomedical research field an “extracellular matrix”--that is, bio-engineered for this patient.

In this case, the extracellular matrix came from a pig’s bladder, specially treated to strip out all of the living cells from the pig, leaving only what resembled a piece of parchment.

But that wasn’t just another graft used to hold tissues together. Rather, that matrix “recruited stem cells” to that site, some on the outside, others inside. The new cells, located near the existing muscle cells, grew into fresh muscles, replacing those that the Marine had lost in the injury and surgery.  (If I read the article correctly, two weeks after the work was done he was out hunting.)

So we have in these two articles two different types of scaffold in use by tissue engineers in bio-engineering regrowth of human body parts. One scaffold was formed from plastic upon which stem cells could reform into a replacement windpipe. In this case, the scaffold was treated tissue, used to allow new muscle to grow around.

Both were sigificant steps in the emerging science of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

And to think that not so many years ago, when my agent at the time pitched my technothriller A REMEDY FOR DEATH, she got the consistent feedback: “Too far out! Nobody’ll ever accept that kind of stuff!”


To link to this New York Times series “Body Builders” by Henry Fountain., consisting of the three articles and the related graphics.

For more information and to order my technthriller  A REMEDY FOR DEATH: Playing God with Body,  Soul, and Bio-tech

Organ regeneration--developing bio-artificial replacement organs-- was the subjcct of a three-part New York Times series last week (which mentioned in an earlier post here), and there are related items to come on other instances of real-world organ regeneration, tissue engineering, and other forms of regenerative medicine to come in this blog.

This week news of  a bioartifical organ, in this case an ear, being developed and implanted at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins.  From the CBS report:

"The discovery of a rapidly-spreading basal cell cancer in her ear in 2008 required the removal of part of her ear, part of her skull and her left ear canal. But now, in a groundbreaking and complicated set of surgeries, Johns Hopkins doctors have attached a new ear made from Walters’ own tissue.

“I thought of this exact strategy many years before and really was looking for the right patient to try it on,” said renowned plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr. Patrick Byrne.

Byrne used cartilage from Walters’ ribs to stitch together a new ear matching her right ear. He then implanted it under the skin of her forearm, where it grew for months.

“We started making jokes just to try to get used to it and I was like, `Can you hear me? Can you hear me?’ said Sherrie’s husband, Damien."

Given that the family is comfortable enough now to joke, let me add this one:  You've heard the old saying about wearing your heart on your sleeve?  Well, here's a case of wearing your bio-artificial ear on / under your sleeve. 

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On the topic of using the body to grow its own spare parts, you can find a different take in the third in the New York Times series: "Body Builders: One Day, Growing Spare Parts Inside the Body." As the title suggests, these tissue engineered parts were grown internally within the patient's body. That was the third in that Times series on regenerative medicine and tissue engineering

Organ regeneration ("bio artificial" replacement organs) and tissue regeneration were the subject of a three-part series in the New York Times this week. (All by Henry Fountain, under the broader heading, "Body Builders.")

Organ regeneration and other aspects of regenerative medicine form one of the strands in my technothriller A REMEDY FOR DEATH.

Just how organ regeneration (also termed tissue engineering) fits into A REMEDY FOR DEATH I'll skip here now, but it is interesting to see the Times picking up on the possibilities--- which I've been following for quite a long time.  (Since way back 20-plus years ago when  I first got the idea for the book.)  I'll be posting more of my research and idea sources here in various posts.

 In the first article in that NYTimes series link to that NYTimes article,  "A First: Organs Tailor-Made With Body's Own Cells," the focus is on how a bioartificial windpipe was generated for a patient in Iceland. (The work was primarily done at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, heaed by Dr. Paolo Macchiarini.)

The tissue engineering project began by creating a "scaffold" to hold the stem cells that would be implanted. (In a dozen or so earlier tissue regeneration projects, windpipes from cadavers were implanted to serve as the scaffold. But there are problems with that approach, among them finding the right size windpipe.)

So in this case, they created a synthetic scaffold, using plastic polymers. It was a perfect fit, as it had been custom-created for this patient. But that was only part of the challenge.

The next part was getting tissue to grow around that scaffold. I'll leave you to the article for that, except to say that they used the patient's own stem cells as "seeds", which worked well, and hence there was no need to use drugs to fight off rejection, as there would have been had cells from another person been used.

That part went well, but not exactly as planned. Organ regeneration -- tissue growth -- proceded, but in a different way than expected. Dr. Macchiarini, leader of the project, said, "We are far away from understanding the process. Far, far away."

Dr. Macchiarini's "ultimate dream is to eliminate even the synthetic scaffold. Instead, drugs would enable the body to rebuild its own scaffold."  As he put it, the ideal would be if we "don't touch the patient. Just use his body to regenerate his own organ. It would be fantastic."

That New York Times article again.

 My technothriller via Amazon,  A REMEDY FOR DEATH   -- Playing God with Body, Soul, and Bio-tech.

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