healthcare technology
PROGRESS
In recent years, advances in tissue engineering and the role of stem cells in creating organs are leading to great advances in regenerative medicine and opening great doors.
31/03/23 17:45
The regenerative medicine is a broad field of tissue engineering and self-healing that aims to do what its name suggests: to recreate and rebuild damaged tissues or organs. In recent times it has meant a great revolution in medicine and in the treatment of complex and even chronic pathologies. But in addition to the revolution that she herself has been, her advances represent a reality that seems like science fiction.
One of the great steps taken was that of transplant a pig’s heart into a human genetically modified. Thirty years of work led to the fact that it could be carried out for the first time. The event, which occurred in January 2022, showed a lack of rejection by the patient, although he died two months after the transplant due to diastolic heart failure. The causes of this fatal heart damage are still being studied, pointing to an infection or immunotherapy that prevented rejection.
At this point, there are still different challenges to overcome, as evidenced in the 2022 Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association. And while advances in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine are being made, they continue to happen: 3d printed artificial organs cells that could learn to increase the rate of healing or even regenerate cartilage, or mother cells which are used to grow tissue such as new neurons that could be a future treatment for Parkinson’s disease.
In August 2021, a team posted on STEM CELLS Translational Medicine The safety and efficacy of transplanting mesenchymal stem cells in the knees of patients with chronic pain
Technological advances have led to tissue engineering and regenerative medicine now referring to almost the same thing, and as noted by the US National Institute of Biomedicine and Bioengineering, little by little it is being implemented in current medical practice.
STEM CELLS AND ARTIFICIAL ORGANS
Stem cells are pluripotent tissues that can lead to tissue regeneration or even create one. Its use in research is giving very promising results in the treatment of different pathologies. In August 2021, a team posted on STEM CELLS Translational Medicine the safety and efficacy of transplanting mesenchymal stem cells into knees of patients with chronic pain. Five years after transplantation, the osteoarthritis-related knee meniscus tears suffered by these patients “had healed.” This type of treatment is already being used in different health centers, including in our country, to repair bone, cartilage, tendon or muscle injuries.
Scientists have also discovered pathways for the insulin regeneration in pancreatic stem cells, an advance that could facilitate the emergence of treatments for type 1 and type 2 diabetes, pathologies suffered by more than 537 million people according to data from the International Diabetes Federation. Work is also underway to fix heart failure with this type of therapy, research that is being carried out in different parts of the world such as the Gregorio Marañón Hospital.
3D printers are making it possible to create organs through effective embryonic stem cells
And meanwhile, regenerative medicine is evolving on its way to making organs. The in vitro organs through living stem cells they have shown themselves to be safer against rejection and little by little progress has been made since, in 2006, the Institute of Regenerative Medicine of the University Wake Forest artificial bladder implanted in seven patients through their own tissue. In 2010 it was possible to implant in mice a liver and a heart created from their own healthy liver cells and from heart cells of a newborn mouse.
Con 3D printers Different tissues are being created from embryonic stem cells. This is how tracheas have developed for a baby who was born with a tube that did not allow air to pass through; or a cartilage tissue created through rabbit cells. Some solutions that improve the approach to patients and at the same time solve different problems, such as the lack of organs necessary to save the lives of patients with various pathologies.
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