US Doctors Use Stem Cells to Replace Organs

SBS 6.30pm TV World News Transcripts
April 4, 2006

Doctors in the US are reporting increased success in using stem cell technology, to replace damaged body parts. After replicating skin and cartilage from scratch, they have now built functioning bladders, and are working towards customized blood vessels, lungs and even hearts. It is another milestone in what is called regenerative medicine. Doctors have not only grown human organs in the lab, tonight they're reporting these custom-made bladders are working well four years after being implanted in patients.

DR ANTHONY ATALA, UROLOGIST: One of the benefits that we see in the study is the ability to know that these technologies, indeed, are possible and can be done in patient’s long term with safety.

16-year-old Caitlin McNamara, born with a diseased bladder that left their incontinent, was one of seven children to receive a new organ.

CAITLIN MCNAMARA, PATIENT: Since I've had the bladder I haven't had the accidents and I don't have to have people come up to me and say, “ Well, there's a problem.";

The lab procedure went like this. After extracting a tiny piece of Caitlin's diseased bladder doctors isolated some healthy adult’s stem cells and placed them on a mould, or scaffold, one layer at a time, much like making a layered cake. Within seven weeks the cells grew together into a functioning organ, which was then implanted.

DR ALAN RETIK, UROLOGIST: Improvements that you see immediately is that the bladder, which was small before, is much larger. The pressures in the bladder, which were high, are much lower.

And because the bladder was created using a patient's own cells the body does not reject it. Bladders are just the first of what could be many different organs grown in a lab and implanted in people. Researchers at several universities are now racing to develop grow-your-own hearts, blood vessels, livers and lungs. Doctors say customized a heart is most complex of the organs under development but some say even that might be ready for growing and implanting within five to seven years.

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