Lab Rebuilds a Human Lung

Scientists out of Galveston, Texas have successfully rebuilt a human lung in record time according to recent reports.

The researchers, a team from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) rebuilt an arguably transplant-ready human lung from the "skeleton" of a damaged one. They did this by stripping a damage lung entirely of its cells leaving what researchers refer to as "cellular scaffolding."

Dr. Joan Nichols, the lead of the UTMB team, described the scaffolding, calling it "very pretty" due to its stark-white color and delicate appearance. According to Nichols, the process of removing all human cells from a lung used to take months, but with the help of UTMB student Michael Riddle, they were able to cut the duration of the process down to a matter of days. Riddle reportedly developed the equipment from a pet-store-bought fish tank, of all things.

Once all that was left of the lung was its scaffolding, the team was able to graft on adult stem cells from another human lung that could no longer be used for transplant, but still had intact cells.

Now here's where things get almost like science-fiction. Unlike the controversial human embryonic stem-cells, adult stem cells can only replicate cells of the organ they came from. Still, if given the right "frame," adult stem cells can grow an entire new organ in a remarkably short amount of time.

Other organs, such as the heart, have already been successfully grown from adult stem cells in the past, but the lung is much trickier due to its immense complexity. Supposedly immaculate cellular scaffolding is absolutely necessary for guiding the growth of a lung, but UTMB thinks they pulled it off.

This is fantastic news for people waiting for lung transplants. A transplant is usually a last-resort for many patients, but the risk of organ rejection (when one's body rejects the cells of an organ from another body) is alarmingly high, with survival chances only being about 50 percent five years after a successful transplant, according to the U.S. Scientific Register of Transplant Recipients.

Lab grown lungs could increase the survival rate considerably, especially if the adult stem cell the new lung is grown from has been extracted from the transplant's intended recipient.

Still UYMB researchers are quick to point out that it could take over a decade before lab grown lungs are even deemed safe enough for human testing. Also, even with "clean" cellular scaffolding, like the one used in this most recent breakthrough, there is still a risk of contamination. Other research into organ growth with adult stem cells has looked into creating this same scaffolding synthetically to eliminate that risk.