tissue engineering
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Doctors "Grow" Woman a New Ear Inside Her Own Forearm
No doubt, that would be huge. First, it would get around a major hurdle that now limits live-saving transplants. The waiting list for new organs is so long some patients die before they can get their operations.
Second, the body's immune system often rejects the new organ as an "invader." To combat this, patients must take strong drugs that can have some pretty severe side effects.
Doctors have said for decades that "regenerative medicine" would yield custom-made organs. And for just as long it's remained more theory than practice.
Until now...
Just last month, a team from Johns Hopkins said it had rebuilt an ear for a cancer patient using the woman's own tissue.
Not only that, but they actually "grew" the ear inside the woman's forearm.
"When my doctors told me reconstruction was possible, I thought it was too good to be true," said Sherrie Walter, a working mother of two. "It sounded like science fiction."
But it turned out to be science fact...
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“Cyborg” Tissue Blurs the Line Between Man and Machine
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I predict that in the near future, robots will be so human-like that it will seem natural for us interact with them. We'll also see the advent of people who are what I call "bionics" - those who put computer chips or other devices in their brains or bodies.
As I see it, we are fast approaching the day in which man and machine become fused together.
Just in the last few days, researchers reported major breakthroughs that promise to do just that. In a moment, I'll tell you all about it.
First, remember the new hydrogel we investigated last Wednesday - the material that could greatly improve human health and aging by replacing damaged cartilage?
Turns out there's another part of the part of the story we need to know about.
This type of hydrogel could play a vital role in the cutting-edge field of robotics, too.
See, we're getting very close to the day in which we augment robots with "smart" human tissue. We'll grow tissue in labs and equip it with onboard electronics made possible by nanotech circuits.
That's where the hydrogel would come in handy. We won't just replace damaged cartilage in people. We'll use that or something like it to link sensor-laden tissue inside robots or in people with organ transplants or artificial limbs.
Just two weeks ago, a research team from MIT and the University of Pennsylvania said they had blurred the boundary between biology and machines even further. They genetically engineered skeletal muscles for robots that work by responding to light.
This is just amazing...
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