transplants

Organ transplants can save lives, but unfortunately organs don’t last long in storage. Now scientists have demonstrated that an existing drug can reprogram donor hearts to last much longer outside the body, and reduce their risk of failure after transplantation.Currently, donated hearts can only survive for around four hours in cold storage, which doesn’t leave much time to get them from donor to recipient. Much of the problem arises from a molecule called succinate, which builds up in the organ while it’s sitting on ice.…

Unlike normal skin, scar tissue doesn't contain any hair follicles. New research now indicates that when such follicles are transplanted into scar tissue, that tissue changes to become much more like uninjured skin.Previous studies have already shown that skin with lots of hair follicles heals faster and scars less than non-hairy skin. It has additionally been found that follicles boost the healing process when transplanted into relatively fresh wound sites.Scientists at Imperial College London set out to take things…

Animal organs are one potential solution. But it’s not easy to overcome the human body’s natural revolt against them. For example, sugars on the surface of pig tissue can send our immune system into attack mode. Drugs can help mute the response, but it’s not enough. So biotech companies have used gene editing to modify pigs, removing those sugar molecules and adding other genes to make the pigs seem more human-like.  By editing the DNA of pigs in this way, several biotech companies have now created animals whose organs…

Starting in the 1960s, doctors attempted transplants of kidneys, hearts, and livers from baboons and chimpanzees—humans’ closest genetic relatives—into people. But the organs failed within weeks, if not days, due to rejection or infection. These efforts were largely abandoned after “Baby Fae,” an infant with a fatal heart condition, died within a month of receiving a baboon heart transplant in 1984. (Her immune system rejected the heart.) By the 1990s, researchers turned their attention to pigs. Their organs are more…

But it was Patient No. 7, treated at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (chop), who altered the history of T-cell therapy. In May, 2010, a five-year-old girl named Emily Whitehead, from central Pennsylvania, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Among the most rapidly progressive forms of cancer, this leukemia generates very immature B cells, and tends to afflict young children. The treatment for ALL ranks among the most intensive chemo regimens ever devised: as many as seven or eight drugs, given in…

The opportunity to conceive, carry and give birth to a biologically related child is a deep desire for many women and their partners.Since the introduction of IVF in 1978, many people in countries such as Australia have accessed support and resources to help realize their reproductive goals.For some women, the lack of a functioning uterus has kept that opportunity out of reach. This includes those with a congenital condition such as Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome and those who had a hysterectomy for medical…

Fecal Microbiota Transplantation as the confluence of a donor’s and recipient’s gut ecosystems. The various “pipes” in the image represent human gastrointestinal tract and the bacteria within represent the recipient’s and donor’s microbial strain populations (by color) that are pitched against each other. Credit: Aleksandra Krolik / EMBLScientists used data from over 300 human fecal microbiota transplants to gain an ecological understanding of what happens when two gut microbiomes clash together.Fecal microbiota…

Image: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)Just about a million organ transplants have now been performed in the United States. The milestone was reached Friday, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the nonprofit facilitator of these life-saving operations in the U.S. It’s been nearly 70 years since the first donated whole organ was successfully transplanted into a human.For centuries, doctors had tried and failed to transplant tissues or organs from one person, or even an animal, to another. In 1905, the…

Using a special machine that pumps blood and other fluids around the body, researchers restored cells and organs in pigs an hour after the animals’ death by cardiac arrest. The feat holds the potential to one day increase the number of human organs available for transplants. The team hooked up the animals’ circulatory system to OrganEx, a system that pumps a mixture of blood and a “perfusate” of fluid-borne nutrients around the body. Cells in all of the major organs of the pigs—which were anesthetized and euthanized—not…

The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.1 Chipmakers are already scrapping for the $52 billion CHIPS fundingWhile the cash is a welcome boost to the industry, the struggle is far from over. (FT $) 2 The software that manages organ transplants is dangerously outdatedExasperated transplant doctors say the system is endangering lives. (WP $)+ The UK’s health service will use AI to detect and treat people at risk of hepatitis C. (The…