Man grows replacement jaw via stem cells and organic soup

Finnish scientists at Regea Institute of Regenerative Medicine were able to grow a new jaw for a man using stem cells culled from the man’s own adipose tissue. They

isolated stem cells from the patient’s fat and grew them for two weeks in a specially formulated nutritious soup that included the patient’s own blood serum. . .

When they had enough cells to work with, they attached them to a scaffold made out of a calcium phosphate biomaterial and then put it inside the patient’s abdomen to grow for nine months. The cells turned into a variety of tissues and even produced blood vessels, the researchers said. (Sami Torma for Reuters)

The cynic in me immediately thought: cosmetic surgeons are going to have a field day as this development is fine tuned. . . Don’t like your breasts, don’t worry, we can grow you a new pair!

This type of development if harnessed correctly could advance medicine a number of fields, but it could quell the debate over how to encourage organ donation. There are just under 100,000 Americans on the national organ donor registry. Those waiting for kidneys have the longest wait, a median of 476 days to find a match. A 9 month gestation of a new kidney could cut that wait down at least 40%. And given an organ built from one’s own DNA is ridiculously unlikely to be rejected by the body, it’s a pretty safe call that there won’t be a need for multiple transplants after organ failure.

This advancement would also likely be well-suited to reconstructive surgery for cancer survivors and even burn victims.

Undoubtedly it will be years before there’s an opportunity to use such findings with in regularity, but it does bring up another ethical question: cost. Will insurers cover the cost of growing a new organ? Or will the cost be so prohibitive that 18 months on dialysis, traditional organ transplant and drugs to stave off rejection will seem cheap by comparison?

On another note, a man gestated a new jaw in his belly for nine months. If a man can grow a jaw, what’s to say the technology to grow a baby can’t be far behind. It would open up a world of opportunity for gay couples who still facing discrimination in trying to adopt, as well as alternative for women who find they can’t conceive. Even better, it would be a great equilizer — with women increasing completing more education than men and making more of the big spending decisions; wouldn’t it follow that in some couples, it might be easier for man to take on the role of “mom”?