Research team successfully grows human lung in lab

SLAYER69

Research team successfully grows human lung in lab

(Medical Xpress)—A team of researchers with the University of Texanderfful s has, for the first time, successfully grown a human lung in a lab. Project leads Dr. Joaquin Cortiella and Dr. Joan Nichols announced the landmark breakthrough to various members of the press this past week, describing the procedure and what was achieved.


Growing organs in the lab has become a reality in the past couple of years as scientists have learned more about stem cells and how they mature to become the cells that make up organs and other body parts. Windpipes, for example, have been successfully grown and implanted into human patients, and just last spring, a team of researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston successfully implanted lab grown kidneys into rats. In this new effort, the researchers have been focusing on growing one of the most complicated organs in the human body—the lungs.

What does ATS think about this?

It seems they are moving forward with lab grown organ replacements at an ever increasing speed. I have a thread in the works along these lines. I came across this story while researching for it. Outside the obvious smokers needs for a new set I think this is a wonderful development for people with lung problems not related to smoking.

I know some may be against such developments.


Anyway, I thought it was worth posting...

You know what. I read this thread the other day & it got me to thinkin' about our organs & our insides. I thought, what if you measured the size of the liver of a man who was say, dead since 1000BC then compared it to the size of modern man's liver I wonder, would the ancient man's liver have been smaller? Could the size of our livers increased due to the increase of alcohol consumption? Even if that one thing I thought of weren't true, you could use this idea in other ways to further prove the evolution of man by adaptation to changes. (In my idea that would be the increased consumption of alcohol thru millennia would cause the change in the human liver.)