Two Boston institutions have been granted three patents covering technology that may one day allow new organs to grow inside the human body.
The patents were granted to Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Children's Hospital of Boston and are licensed to Advanced Tissue Sciences of La Jolla, California.
With the process, human cells are seeded on a biodegradable scaffold in the laboratory, and the scaffold is then implanted into the body where the replacement tissue is needed. The cells then grow into tissue that replaces diseased tissue.
"By the time the cells have grown to their desired shape the scaffold has dissolved and the old organ can be removed, if needed. [Advanced Tissue Sciences president Gail] Naughton said the technique has the potential to grow a liver in a newborn baby within three to four weeks," Reuters news service reported.
Advanced Tissue Sciences has experimented with the technique in animals "to grow pancreas, gastrointestinal tracts, bone, ligaments, skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle and livers," the New York Times reported on June 29. However, it could be years before the technology can be used in humans. Reuters said that trials for generating bone and heart muscles could begin in about two years. Trials to generate liver tissue, for which the approach is believed to be especially promising, could be five to ten years away.
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