I Don’t Need To Quit Smoking, I’ll Pick Up New Lungs On The Way Home

From Patricia Piccinini’s exhibit Protein Lattice

Apparently, while I wasn’t paying attention, the world got real Syfy on me. I recently found out that we’ve successfully grown and implanted a trachea grown from stem cells. Somehow, I missed the entire evolution of this process, but it’s pretty damn amazing, nonetheless. I know we’ve been trying to grow bits and pieces of human for a while, so the success of this process is another notch in our belt. However, the thing that made my mind explode is that it took us only two days to grow the trachea. Two days! It takes me longer to get tomatoes. This made me realize that we are in fact the aliens we write about in movies. I mean, we now have laser guns, slip tracking chips into our dogs, and grow our own organs. Despite a frightening appearance, what else do we need to fit the bill of the otherworldly visitors we’ve created in science fiction? Despite that, I’m strangely comforted by the fact that if I misplace my liver on the way to work or wake up in a tub full of ice with a kidney missing, I can simply call my local organ gardener and have a replacement in a matter of hours. Maybe they’ll let me rent to own.  Anyway, all this speedy organ growing got me wondering, what the hell are they using to grow a piece of my body in two days that would normally take nine months? Here is what I found.

Stem cells are taken from the marrow, bladder, cartilage, skin, or blood vessels of a person. Your future organ growth requires specific mechanical and structural properties to achieve success. The desired properties dictate where the cells are taken from. After the Cells are extracted, they go through a period of cultivation and proliferation before they’re planted into a three dimensional, artificial structure that can support their growth. These structures are called scaffolding. What the scaffolding does is guide the growing cells into the appropriate shape while allowing them the freedom of their own natural movement. When the cells start to grow and form their own structural matrix, the scaffolding begins to be absorbed by the surrounding tissue and eventually disappears completely. Okay, so far we have a doctor taking some stem cells from a dude, and smearing them on something that looks like a Chinese finger trap. Fine, fine, I’ll buy it. But I’m sure you don’t just stick goo-covered Chinese finger trap in the sunlight on your window sill and wait for your egg timer to go off. Right? Right. That’s where part B comes into play.

The potential Chinese finger trap organ has to have a specific environment in which to grow. So, enter the bioreactors. The bioreactor is a fancy pants device that looks like a robot form the 70s with all sorts of knobs, buttons, gaskets, tubes, meters, and such. Essentially, the bioreactor creates the perfect environmental conditions so that the cells can perform their desired functions with a 100 percent success rate. The bioreactors are constantly monitored by people to make sure the environment never changes unless someone wants it to. Levels are set for things like temperature, circulation, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. NASA is actually responsible for the creation of the bioreactor that grows artificial tissue. If you had one of these bioreactors, you could grow heart tissue, ligaments, and skeletal tissue. Basically, we can bake a person from scratch. These things seriously revolutionize crafting and baking possibilities for Suzie Homemakers everywhere. I can’t help but think it won’t be long before replacement organs are something you can pick up at Walmart on your way home from work. So, don’t worry about diet and exercise or kicking that addiction. Once you keel over, we’ll just stuff you with new parts, sprinkle you with all the fixings, and call you a baked potato. You’ll be good as new and as tasty as ever. Hell, we might even be able to keep the elderly alive for longer.

But hang on, we have one more step in the process of organ growth. After the future organ has cooked in the bioreactor for long enough, it’s removed and then implanted in a person. Because the organ was created from the person’s own stem cells, there’s no chance of it being rejected. It’s already a part of them before it’s even in their body. Ultimately, anyone who gets a newly created organ put inside them has something way cooler than a scar and much less creepy than a baboon heart.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL72Dn3rJ_E’]

Despite my sarcastic tone, I do think that there are some really amazing benefits that come from our ability to cultivate stem cell growth. Also, the technology behind the entire process is fascinating. However,  I ultimately wish we would take better care of our bodies. It would be nice if we spent as much time and money revolutionizing the food industry and educating people about health. I feel that that’s the most logical solution to a lot of health issues we currently face. However, I can’t deny that our ability to grow functioning parts of a human outside of the womb is pretty effing amazing.