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Grow your own transplant liver in a lab within just 5 years
Desperately ill patients waiting for a transplant could be able to 'grow their own' livers within five years, British doctors said last night.
The announcement follows a landmark study in which Cambridge University researchers turned skin from patients' arms into liver cells. Scaled up, the technique could be used to generate full-sized livers, each a perfect match for the patient.
The breakthrough, reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, comes amid soaring rates of liver disease, and will hasten the search for new drugs.
The research uses recently introduced “induced pluripotent stem cell” or iPSC technology. This involves treating adult skin cells with a chemical cocktail that turns their genetic clock back to an embryo-like state. The cells are then exposed to another series of chemicals to drive them into becoming specialised liver cells.