Growing Liver In Lab

Do you actually know as to how many people are there throughout the world who had been suffering from chronic liver problems? How many people know that they are going to diet in a few months to days with their liver dying at a very rapid pace? Do we know as to how many people are starting to be alcoholics every day? How many people are found positive with the hepatitis A, B or C viruses? How many people got certain medications that cause acute liver toxicity and can cause it to choke and die? These are all the different causes that can eat up the liver very quickly. There are thousands of cases reported throughout the world where the people are going through the liver problems and are at the verge of losing their lives. All these people are just hoping that one day that will be very soon, they will see a breakthrough where they can get a liver implanted in them so that they can get a new life. There is a long long cue of people who are awaiting a liver transplantation and they are awaiting a transplant desperately and if they are not going to get the transplant they are going to die.

There is a lot of population who is going through the disease processes where life is just moving further away from them every single day. But I think that the medical science has been putting forward a new ear of hope and life in the people who are going through these problems where they can find a new life for them. Scientists have been successful in making a liver in the lab. Isn’t that amazing? I believe that a lot of people who are going to read this information will be thinking of getting themselves a new liver made in the lab and I think that it is really an awesome thing and that time is not so far. Recently the British scientists have grown a small liver from the stem cells and that is a huge breakthrough. All this is still in the experimental phases but it can really give life to an individual who need the liver transplant urgently. The liver that they have made in the lab right now is the size of the coin and they are used for drug testing and another amazing thing is that it reduces the use of the animals to experiment on.

The scientists who have made the liver have said that they have made the section of a liver and that they are seeing that they will be able to repair the liver in sections and will be able to repair the damaged portions of the liver and they will be able to make livers that are of full size and are completely functioning organs. I know that you might be thinking as to how the scientists conducted their experiments where they were able to make a liver that works as a live organ. The scientists made this liver with the stem cells. Stem cells are cells that are the precursor cells and that they can change to any form of cells. These cells are being taken from the umbilical cord of the newborn babies and thus these cells are used to make a new liver. When these cells are being taken from the umbilical cord, these cells are then placed into a bioreactor. In the bioreactor the environment is of weightlessness and this environment just provides the environment where the cells can multiply very rapidly. They said that they then use the different hormones and chemicals and it is then the stem cells are then persuaded into becoming the liver tissue.
There are other research teams who have made the liver from the stem cells and the above researchers who have used the stem cells from the umbilical cord are the first ones to try and make the liver from that. There are different school of thoughts who say that it is not ethical to use the stem cells that are derived from the embryos and that to make the different organs it is not advisable to use the embryos because during the process of using the stem cells the embryos die and that makes the formation of the organs this way unethical. On the other hand the researchers who are using the stem cells from the umbilical cord are considered more ethical and in this process no life is being taken for scientific research and hence a lot of people will be favoring to this mode of development of the organs. These organs that are being made can be used to test the effects of the different drugs and can prevent the individuals from suffering of going through a great deal such as an individual who got the name of the elephant man because his entire body swelled and he was almost deformed.

The scientists believe that in a few years that they will be able to make the liver and replace it with the liver that is being damaged due to alcoholism, toxic drugs, infections etc. and in such cases the sections of artificial liver can be placed inside the people so that they can live their life much better with a good quality of life. The scientists are also thinking that they will be able to fix the liver with the dialysis machines so that they would be able to clear out the toxic components from them. These days the researchers are thinking that they need to make a wave going throughout the world where the blood from the umbilical cord is being collected from the millions of people throughout the world. They added that there needs to be blood banks where the blood of the umbilical cords is being collected and stored and be used for the experiments.


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