Apparently, growing rat organs is the latest rage these days.
Just weeks after researchers at the University of Minnesota medical school said they grew breathing rat lungs in a laboratory, a team from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University announced they not only grew rat lungs but also implanted the organs into rats.
The lungs worked for six hours, albeit imperfectly, according to a study the team published in the journal Nature Medicine.
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The Massachusetts team used a process called decellularization, in which they strip cells off a lung, leaving only a scaffolding or frame. They then inject stem cells into the matrix and grow the organ in a bioreactor, a sort of an artificial womb.
The technique has also been used by University of Minnesota scientists, including the lung project and Doris Taylor, who attracted worldwide attention in 2008 by growing a beating rat’s heart in a jar.
The Massachusetts team seems to have taken the technology to a new level by using a mix of stem cells from rats and humans (score one for homo sapiens!) and implanting the resulting lung into a rat. And the lungs sort of worked! For six hours at least.
Aside from pure scientific interest, I write this blog post to remind people that given the hype and expectations for Taylor’s work, which spun out into a startup called Miromatrix Inc., Minnesota does not hold a monopoly on technology key to organ regeneration. There are plenty of smart people around the world who are on par or even well ahead of Taylor and Miromatrix.
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At the same time, all of this work provides third-party validation that the basic technology behind decellularization works, said Miromatrix CEO Robert Cohen.
In fact, Harald Ott, the lead researcher on the Massachusetts team and considered the father of regenerative medicine, sits on Miromatrix’s board of directors.
I’m sure rats everywhere are thrilled.
