First Organ Grown From Stem Cells Alone: Report

By Brenda Goodman HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 3 (HealthDay News) -- Japanese scientists report they've turned a cocktail of stem cells into the world's first functioning livers.

The tiny livers were created in the lab and transplanted into mice, where they grew and began to perform the same functions as human-sized livers, including metabolizing drugs and making liver-specific proteins.

Though very basic -- the experimental livers don't have all the features of full-grown organs -- it's believed to be the first time scientists have grown a three-dimensional organ in the lab using only cells.

Previously, scientists have made solid organs using stem cells that are seeded onto some kind of scaffold, either a donor organ that's been washed of all its original cells or some kind of artificial material.

But one expert said this latest approach takes the concept one step further.

"This is a different strategy to create tissues and organs," said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine, in Winston-Salem, N.C.

"The work is very important because it allows you to study how organs are created and how they give rise to more functional complex systems," Atala said. "This is a nice advance."

With further study, researchers think their technique could one day solve the critical shortage of human organs for transplantation.

"We are now assessing the applicability to other organs such as the pancreas and kidneys because they have a similar kind of developmental course as the liver. So far, we've had fascinating results," Takanori Takebe, a professor of regenerative medicine at the Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine, said at a press briefing.

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First Organ Grown From Stem Cells Alone: Report