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Anthony Atala makes bladders. Not the plastic-model kind but actual living, human organs. Step into his office at Wake Forest University’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine (IRM), where the 48-year-old tissue engineer is director, and you’ll find a suite of climate-controlled chambers the size of hotel mini fridges. Inside, spheres of human bladder cells resembling deflated pink balloons divide and grow. Culled from patients with incontinence problems, these cells will assemble themselves over time, forming into brand-new replacement bladders for the cell donors.
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The IRM is now collaborating with local biotech company Tengion, which is bankrolling large-scale clinical trials of Atala’s bladders and hopes to manufacture them eventually. Meanwhile, Atala is busy replicating more than 20 kinds of tissues and organs, including hearts and livers. But because the vast snarls of blood vessels inside these organs are exceedingly difficult to grow in the lab, he thinks it might be decades before his work yields commercially viable treatments. “Rushing may be OK when you’re trying to get a widget or a videogame on the market,†he says, “but not when you’re dealing with patients’ lives.â€
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The IRM is now collaborating with local biotech company Tengion, which is bankrolling large-scale clinical trials of Atala’s bladders and hopes to manufacture them eventually. Meanwhile, Atala is busy replicating more than 20 kinds of tissues and organs, including hearts and livers. But because the vast snarls of blood vessels inside these organs are exceedingly difficult to grow in the lab, he thinks it might be decades before his work yields commercially viable treatments. “Rushing may be OK when you’re trying to get a widget or a videogame on the market,†he says, “but not when you’re dealing with patients’ lives.â€
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