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Jessica South
Cosmos Cluster 7
July 27, 2015
Research paper
History of Organ Growing and Transplants
Growing organs is a recently added field to regenerative medicine. However, getting to the
point of growing organs and engineering tissue has been slow process. Before anyone
could even consider growing their own organs, doctors and scientists first had to figure out
how to successfully perform an organ transplant. They had to overcome many obstacles
along the way to success, such as, lack of technology, experience and lack of knowledge of
the immune system.
Starfish, sharks and spiders all have one large thing in common that most people
never think of; they all have the ability to regenerate a part of their body. Starfish, if cut in
half can regenerate the missing half of their body making two new starfish. Shark have a
continuous teeth supply, and spiders have the ability to re-grow lost legs. While human
bodies are able to re-grow and heal skin and damaged tissue, these animals that have the
ability to regenerate major body parts have led many humans to question if humans can regrow limbs or internal organs. These questions were asked long before scientists were
able to study animal regeneration. While much research has been done on the how
animals naturally regenerated limbs, scientist are expanding this research to develop
methods of introducing medical stimulus to force organ regeneration, and they are having
success growing organs outside of the body for transplants in pursuit of a new and tangible
methods of saving peoples life. While the history of organ transplants is short compared to
the idea of regeneration, discoveries made during transplant surgeries have greatly
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advanced the science of growing organs and influencing the way doctors look a medicine
today.
Scientists for thousands of years have worked in medicine to develop the best
technology and techniques. The idea of regeneration has fascinated many scientists for
hundreds of years when watching lizards regenerate limbs or earthworms regenerate half
their body. Still regenerative medicine had been a mystery and challenge for scientist to
understand for hundreds of years. Organ transplant was a new technique introduced into
medicine in the beginning of the 1900's. Kidney transplants began to be practiced on
sheep, pigs, goats and primates in 1906. Then in 1909, the first animal to human kidney
transplant was performed, although it was unsuccessful. Twenty years later, a hospital in
Russia was the first to perform a human to human kidney transplant, however, the donor
and the recipient had different blood types, which resulted in rejection of the organ and the
receiving patient’s death. Shortly after, a British scientist, Sir Peter Medawar, discovered
that transplant rejections are based on the immune system’s response to the organ. This
altered transplant surgery, resulting in more successful surgeries in the future. Ten years
after this discovery, in 1954, the first successful human transplant, a kidney transplant, was
performed. The donor and the recipient were identical twins so there would be no
rejection of the organ. The twin who received the kidney lived for eight years following the
surgery. The first heart transplant was performed in 1967 by Dr. Christiaan Barnard. The
surgery was successful, but the patient died 18 days later after contracting pneumonia
caused by the anti-rejection drugs the patient had to take. Anti-rejection drugs were of
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poor quality until the 1970s because they compromised the immune system so much it
could not protect the body from basic illnesses. The drugs began improving in the 1970s
allowing transplant patients to live longer; however, the drug had many side effects and
cost a substantial amount of money. Despite cost and side effects, people began to get
transplants, which began causing a shortage of greatly needed donor organs. Just as there
was a shortage back then, a great shortage of organ donors exist today that affect
thousands of patients and even costing some of them their lives by waiting for a suitable
donor.
For many years the lack of technology held back scientists from studying
regeneration, but as the demand for organ transplants grew, the technology, methods and
techniques of regenerating organs evolved. Regenerative Medicine became a possibility in
the 1980s when scientists combined engineering and cell biology to create “living,
functional tissues to repair or replace old, damaged or diseased tissue” (Maienschein).
“Regenerative medicine tries to create living, functional tissue by using living cells or
tissue” (“Regenerative Medicine”). Even though the idea of regenerative medicine has been
around for years, the term "regenerative medicine" was first founded in 1992 by Leland
Kaiser.
Today, even with all the advancement in field of regenerative medicine, including
organ growing and tissue engineering, "on average, 21 people die each day from lack of
available organs. Yet, almost every 12 minutes another name is added to the national
transplant waiting list" (”Facts and Myths”). Scientists have been working to develop and
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grow functioning organs to place in human patients; however, progress has been slow and
other ideas of regenerative medicine are evolving.
Biomedical and tissue engineering is within the field of regenerative medicine, but
instead of using cells to create organs tissue, engineering makes artificial skin and cartilage
using 3-D printing and stem cells. Biomedical engineers do not only recreate tissues, they
also design and develop medical devices such as implants and imaging devices. Scientists
had successfully made many goals of where science is today due to advanced technology
and cutting edge equipment allowing scientist to grow tissue and organs in
laboratories. Prototypes have been developed; however, many are still being tested in
animals. A few grown or engineered organs such as bladders have been placed in human
patients. By learning to create new organs, thousands of lives can be saved because of a
better match to one’s body type, and patients no longer need to wait for a transplant due to
a shortage of organ donors.
We all started as a single cell that had the natural process to make us and all our
organs. Regenerative medicine is very interested in unlocking this natural building-block
code and process that is part of each of us. The focus on this research is stem cells. Stem
cells are greatly needed in the use and research of regenerative medicine and growing
organs. "In the mid-1800s it was discovered that cells were the basic building blocks of
life and that some cells had the ability to produce other cells" (Murnaghan). Stem cells are
different than other cells because "they are capable of dividing themselves to renew their
numbers and under the right conditions have the ability to become tissue or organ cells
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with specific functions" (Stem cell basics). The first stem cells were discovered in human
cord blood in 1978. Since then, stem cells have been taken and grown from multiple
different animals, including, mice, hamsters and primates. For many years scientists
mainly worked with embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cell research includes taking
cells from a human embryo and growing the cell in a laboratory. Today, stem cell research
has improved greatly. Stem cells are now being used to treat heart disease and leukemia;
however, there is still much development ahead and "the potential for stem cells are
overwhelmingly positive" (Murnaghan). The potential for stem cells to treat disease gives
many people hope that new treatments will be developed for future generations.
Organ transplants have improved greatly since the first successful human
transplant 61 years ago and continue to evolve with continuous develop in safer, more
efficient ways of performing the transplant surgery. Scientist and doctors have
"overcome major technical limitations to become the success it is today" (Watson).
When transplants were first attempted in the early 1900, organs used were from
animals, donors who had been dead for multiple hours, or were not the proper bloodtype match. Today we have more knowledge of the human body and the technology to
solve almost any medical problem. Also, doctors and surgery have a higher quality of
training than medical schools in the 1950s. Organ transplants are still "new"
considering the long history of science and medicine, and there is still much to learn and
discover as time progresses. As the science of regenerative medicine advances, the
growing of organs, tissue engineering and stem cell research will have a large impacted
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on the world of medicine all for the common goal of giving people the best fighting
chance at life and giving those added to the national transplant waiting list every 12
minutes hope.
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Work Cited
“Facts and Myths." American Transplant Foundation. American Transplant Foundation, n.d.
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"Frequently Asked Questions." Stem Cell Basics: Introduction. U.S. Department of Health and
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Maienshein, Jane. "Regenerative Medicine's Historical Roots in Regeneration,
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15 Oct. 2011. Web. 26 July 2015.
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2015. Web. 26 July 2015.
"Regenerative Medicine." NIH Fact Sheets. U.S. Department of Health and Human Service,
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Watson, C.J. E., and J. H. Dark. "Organ Transplantation: Historical Perspective and Current
Practice." Oxford Journals. British Journal of Anaesthesia, n.d. Web. 20 July 2015.
"What Is Biomedical Engineering?" Department of Biomedical Engineering. N.p., n.d. Web.
23 July 2015.