• Question: can you use stem cells to create organs for animals

    Asked by tierney to Emma, James, Jayne, Kara, Sharon on 16 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sharon Sneddon

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      HI Tierney,
      There are mouse, rat, rabbit, monkey, dog, cat and probably lots of other animals which scientists have isolated stem cells from, so it is possible that these could be used to grow new organs, however I don’t know of anyone doing this work, but I guess if an animal was to need an organ transplant, then one day in the future it might be possible!

    • Photo: James Chan

      James Chan answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      well, that is one of the great mysteries. People are now desperately trying to create organs with stem cells, but we’re only just getting started. To help you imagine the scale of this challenge, let me tell you about the heart lung machine! People who have cardiac surgery need to have their hearts stopped so that the surgeons can operate on them – but the body needs fresh oxygenated blood all the time, so what you do is divert all the blood into a heart lung machine which tries to do all the things the heart and lung do: oxygenate the blood and pump it around the body. your heart is the size of your fist. Your lungs are just inside your chest so you can imagine their sizes. guess how big the heart lung machine is? It’s massive! It weights 700 pounds, like a small car! Here’s a picture. http://www.dimensionsguide.com/dimension-of-a-heart-lung-machine/
      Now, instead of using a machine, we’re trying to use cells. The problem is, we are used to growing cells on plastic plates – flat surfaces. So how would you make an organ which is a 3D lump of tissue? Clever guys have come up with the idea of making a ‘scaffold’ – like a frame where the cells can sit on. That’s great, but then, you now have to think how to get any structure to this shape. Think about the heart. It has muscular walls that pump the blood, it has nerves that kick the muscle into contracting, and it has lots of pipes to send blood around the lungs and body. Now think back to the scaffold.. we can’t just turn the entire lump of cells into one type of heart cell. You need to tell different parts to become different types of heart cells – nerves, muscles, piping cells etc. so this gets really complicated! But I think it’s possible. we never thought we’d launch a rocket into outer space 100 years ago and look at your playstation – it’s a million times more advanced than the computer they used to send the first rocket into space!! that’s why we need guys like you to come along and help us solve this puzzle!

    • Photo: Emma King

      Emma King answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      Hi tierney – good question. Technically we could but we would probably have to use stem cell that come from that species of animal, although we can genetically engineer tissue so that it wouldn’t be rejected by another species there isn’t much point if we can use cells from the species itself. Then we would have the problem that organs generally contain a lot of different tissue as well as a structure, so that would be difficult to make and put together.
      What sort of animals are you thinking of and why would you like to create organs for them?

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