Artificial organs ???

[nbucska]

I have seen a kidney preparation where they filled the
blood and urine vessels with plastics of different color
and dissolved the tissues.

Could'nt similar methodes be used to make artificial
lung,kidney, etc.?


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[MikeHalloran]

Finding a material that the immune system won't try to kill/remove is a much bigger challenge than fabrication of that material.







Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[Jabberwocky]

I dunno, there's plenty of inert things that your body won't even try to touch:

gold, titanium alloys, PEEK polymers, carbon fiber, tantalum, most silicone

The problem with creating a functional organ is that they are very very commplex things that are constantly involved in active chemical processes. I don't know what fabrication method we currently have that would match the macroscopic scale of a full lung to the microscopic pore size needed to actually trade oxygen molecules into red blood cells. I think a blood cell is something like 0.00004in wide.

 

[nbucska]

well, a lung or kidney has this microscopic structure.
I am suggenting a way to try to use the organ as a king of
sacrificial template

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[MikeHalloran]

Okay, you could use the organ to cast a mold of its interior, then dissolve the organ, ...

then use the mold as a sacrificial core to make a replacement organ, then dissolve the core.

There are a few questions to be answered before you go into production...

- Where do you get the sacrificial organs?

- Do they need to be healthy?

- Can the listed biocompatible materials be fabricated by the replication process you have suggested?

- Is the resulting physical replica of an organ's topology sufficient to serve as an organ replacement?

( I don't think so, because ... )

- Given that the replica is made of bio-inert materials, how can it participate in the molecular chemistry that is at the core of most organs' function?






Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[Jabberwocky]

Good questions above - also, are our flow processes really that great that we can replicate exceedingly complex microscopic pore geometry?

Not trying to be exclusively negative, but casting a mold of an apple does not make the result a fruit.

 

[bme0319]

Have you checked-out Bioprinting? Not exactly the same thing, but a related topic - interesting.

Here's a few links...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025474.300-print-me-a-heart-and-a-set-of-arteries.html

http://www.nanotechbuzz.com/50226711/bioprinting_to_create_synthetic_organs.php

PP

 

[Jabberwocky]

That's the true wave-of-the-future stuff. It takes full advantage of the cells themselves to perform the tricky bits. I bet you could do this with skin grafts as well.

Waiting for the 5th Element machine to spit out a supermodel....

 

[nbucska]

Mike:

- Where do you get the sacrificial organs?
pigs or cadavers ?
- Do they need to be healthy?
most likely
- Can the listed biocompatible materials be fabricated by the replication process you have suggested?
The listed ones or new ones perhaps using stem-cells.
- Is the resulting physical replica of an organ's topology sufficient to serve as an organ replacement?
The dialysis filter is only partially functional
but still useful.




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