World's first tissue-engineered urethras hailed success

[The world's first tissue-engineered urinary tubes or urethras, grown in the lab using patients' own cells, have been hailed a success by medical experts.

US surgeons have used the lab-grown tubes to treat five Mexican boys with damaged urinary tracts.

They told the Lancet that all of the boys are now fit and that the grafts have taken and repaired the defects.

The same team has already managed to grow new bladders for patients.

Professor Anthony Atala and colleagues are currently working to engineer more than 30 different replacement tissues and organs.

He is director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The first step in engineering the replacement urethras was taking a small sample of cells from the bladder of each of the boys.

Aged 10 to 14, the boys had suffered injuries in accidents.

/ex]
www.bbc.co.uk...
here is a link to the full article

amazing is all i can say to this, it must surely only be a few generations before we are able to create artificial brainless people as backup for any loss of limbs or organs.

Originally posted by lewman
amazing is all i can say to this, it must surely only be a few generations before we are able to create artificial brainless people as backup for any loss of limbs or organs.

Theres plenty of those already walking amongst us

reply to post by Firefly_


very true firefly, maybe we should iq test everyone and if you fail the grade then you will be used for spare parts

Cool, an artificially grown p**s pipe, how long before they can grow the whole "todger"?
I can't wait, I want a new one, the same size as the one I have now, but I'd like it in a different colour.


On a serious note, this is a good find, S&F.

There was a thread started yesterday on this very topic.