Steps Towards Replacement Organs

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The Telegraph reports on another small - but complex and significant - step forward towards growing replacement organs from a patient's own cells. "Researchers in Japan have succeeded in cloning a human kidney by cultivating human stem cells extracted from adult bone marrow into rat embryos, team members said. The development is expected to increase the possibility of expanding regenerative medicine to anatomically complicated organs such as the kidney and lung as a potential means to treat patients with disorders of those organs." This sort of work with animals is running in parallel to other efforts that focus on tissue engineering and nanoscale material scaffolds.

Link: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050224/asp/foreign/story_4417769.asp