A whole organ has been grown inside an animal for the first time
Scientists have grown an important immune system organ from scratch inside a mouse, a breakthrough that could lead to alternatives to organ transplants in humans.
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland have taken a group of cells from a mouse embryo and grown them into a fully functional thymus , an immune system organ, in an adult mouse.
This is the first time a whole organ has been grown from scratch inside an animal, and the findings, which have been published in Nature Cell Biology , could pave the way for alternatives to organ transplants.
These cells were then mixed with some support cells and placed inside mice, where they developed into a complete thymus.
Clare Blackburn, a stem cell scientist at the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh who was part of the research team, told James Gallagher, a journalist for BBC News : “This was a complete surprise to us, that we were really being able to generate a fully functional and fully organised organ starting with reprogrammed cells in really a very straightforward way.
http://sciencealert.com.au/news/20142508-26068.html
Scientists have grown an important immune system organ from scratch inside a mouse, a breakthrough that could lead to alternatives to organ transplants in humans.
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland have taken a group of cells from a mouse embryo and grown them into a fully functional thymus , an immune system organ, in an adult mouse.
This is the first time a whole organ has been grown from scratch inside an animal, and the findings, which have been published in Nature Cell Biology , could pave the way for alternatives to organ transplants.
These cells were then mixed with some support cells and placed inside mice, where they developed into a complete thymus.
Clare Blackburn, a stem cell scientist at the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh who was part of the research team, told James Gallagher, a journalist for BBC News : “This was a complete surprise to us, that we were really being able to generate a fully functional and fully organised organ starting with reprogrammed cells in really a very straightforward way.
http://sciencealert.com.au/news/20142508-26068.html
