Soon, you can shop for body parts off the shelf
Surgeons could soon use ready-made human body parts to repair injuries or patch-up worn out organs of patients, scientists have claimed.
They are perfecting in developing bare “scaffold building blocks” of body parts which, they said, could be used as a frame for a patient’s own cells to grow around.
Experts said the scaffold for the most commonly used parts could be created in advance and stored ready for use when needed, the Telegraph reported.
The technique, which has already been successful in creating a new section of windpipe for patients, involves taking a piece of dead donor or animal body part and removing all the soft tissue so just the bare structure is left.
Then, stem cells from the patient can then be placed on the frame and will regrow into a new body part for them, according to the scientists.
Prof. John Fisher from the University of Leeds said banks of scaffolds of all kinds of body tissue can be created to facilitate doctors in transplants.
Speaking at the UK National Stem Cell Network Annual Science Meeting in Nottingham, Prof. Fisher said that he and his team have been working on to create the scaffolds from dead donors or animals.
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