A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience
If man-made organs were available, nobody would have to wait, or die waiting.
It might be hard to tally how much is a liver worth for someone on a waiting list for a transplant. But one nonprofit is now saying it’s willing to pay $1 million for a bioengineered liver.
Continue reading… “The Methuselah Foundation offers $1 million prize for a bioengineered liver”
The ultimate goal is to provide a solution to the shortage of donor livers available for patients who need transplants.
Researchers at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have reached an early, but important, milestone in the quest to grow replacement livers in the lab. They are the first to use human liver cells to successfully engineer miniature livers that function – at least in a laboratory setting – like human livers. The next step is to see if the livers will continue to function after transplantation in an animal model.
Continue reading… “Scientists Grow Miniature Human Livers in the Lab”
Liver disease is the fifth largest cause of death.
Scientists have created liver cells in a lab for the first time using reprogrammed cells from human skin, paving the way for the potential development of new treatments for liver diseases that kill thousands each year.
Continue reading… “Scientists Create Liver Cells from Human Skin”
A decellularised rat liver retaining its network of blood vessels.
Scientists have grown a liver in a laboratory, offering fresh hope to hundreds of thousands of patients with diseased and damaged organs. It raises the prospect of those in need of transplants one day being offered livers that are ‘made to order’.
Continue reading… “‘Grow-Your-Own’ Liver – Scientists Produce Liver from Stem Cells”
Breast cancer vaccine successful in mice, trials to start on humans in just a year.
American scientists say they have developed a vaccine which has prevented breast cancer from developing in mice. The researchers – whose findings are published in the journal, Nature Medicine – are now planning to conduct trials of the drug in humans.
Continue reading… “Breast Cancer Vaccine Trials to Start on Women Within One Year”
Naringenin, a flavonoid found in citrus fruit including grapefruit, has a revolutionary effect on the liver making it burn fat instead of storing it after a meal
The chemical compound which gives grapefruit its bitter taste could be used to create a diet pill, a study has indicated.
Continue reading… “Ingredient In Grapefruit Could Be Used For Diet Pill”
Scientists in Canada and China have developed a hardy material using human bile acids, which they hope can be used to fill dental cavities.
Continue reading… “Dental Fillings Using Bile Acids Developed”
“Research is now underway in the US to seek FDA approval for an artificial liver.”
Measuring proteins in the blood can help doctors determine patients’ cancer risk and monitor the health of the elderly and people with chronic diseases. But current methods for testing these proteins are too expensive and require too much blood to be performed regularly. A microfluidic chip in clinical trials does on a single chip in 10 minutes what normally takes multiple technicians hours to do–and with just a single drop of blood. Researchers hope to make bedside diagnostics based on blood proteins a reality by bringing down the cost of such tests by at least an order of magnitude.
Continue reading… “Ten Minute Blood Test To Identify Cancer Proteins”
Scientists have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain-with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage.
Continue reading… “Going All Veggie Could Be Bad For Your Brain”
In a new and disturbing twist on the obesity epidemic, some overweight teenagers have severe liver damage caused by too much body fat, and a handful have needed liver transplants.
It may be possible to be both fat and healthy, researchers reported on Monday, for at least half of overweight adults, and close to a third of obese men and women, have normal blood pressure, cholesterol and other measures of heart health.
Continue reading… “Study Shows It Is Possible To Be Fit And Fat”