Via Slashdot, I have learned of the world's first artificial animal -- a jellyfish made of plastic and rat heart cells. The benefits are surprising and unexpected.
This jellyfish like thing starts to "swim" when exposed to electric currents, just as hearts beat in time to electric currents. Put this thing in a tank of sugar water and attach a pacemaker, and you have the perfect environment for testing heart drugs.
Traditionally, heart drugs had to be tested by breeding rats with sick hearts, injecting some rats with the drug and some with a placebo (saline solution to make sure that results aren't just some weird side effect of injections in general), and noting their recovery or death. Then human clinical trials were required because rats don't respond quite the same as humans. (Doing the original testing with humans would be condemning some humans to die, which people won't put up with.) All of this was expensive and took a lot of time.
So instead, we could make a human heart cell jellyfish, put it in the tank, and expose it to drugs dissolved in the water. The effects of the drug become apparently relatively quickly, suggesting which drugs, if any, are good candidates for a successful clinical trial.
The rat version? Proof of concept.
Showing posts with label Artificial Organs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Artificial Organs. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Kidney Cloning
Organ donation is an interesting thing. You can donate some things while you're still alive. A large portion of your liver, which will grow back. One of your two kidneys. One of your two lungs. (Those don't typically grow back.) Other things, you can donate when you die. Your heart. Other things, you'll probably want to wait until your death to donate, like your skin or your corneas.
I was reading earlier this week about how scientists have rebuilt lungs to improve compatibility. Essentially, your own diseased lung is rebuilt from scratch using your own stem cells, then reimplanted. They reported that this will save hundreds of lives every year, because hundreds die while waiting on donor lungs. You can also use a donor who would otherwise be incompatible, which saves even more lives.
And I was thinking, you know what other organ could benefit from this? Kidneys. Millions worldwide depend on dialysis, because their kidneys have totally failed. There's a limited number of machines, and we can't seem to build more fast enough. But if we rebuilt the patient's own kidneys, they would no longer need dialysis. It would be merely a stopgap measure to get them through the failed period, which is no longer "the rest of your short life." In fact, the more organs we could apply this to, the better the organ donation works out. Incompatibility would cease to exist, making every donated organ more useful.
But the best aspect of all was suggested by a reader of the original article who called himself "dancupid." He suggests using 3d printing techniques to lay out an artificial extracellular matrix. If that could be done, then we never need organ donation again. Each person could have an organ bank of 5 or so of their own organs, grown from a printed extracellular matrix and their own stem cells, and kept alive in life support machines. If I get stabbed in the kidneys, I can have my loved ones take a kidney from my organ bank to the hospital, where they implant it. The stabbed one can be donated to someone who couldn't afford the printed organs (and will have its cells replaced with their own), and when I get home, I print a new one in case this happens again. If my lungs should develop cancer from all the air pollution, I have a printed replacement ready to go. If my heart should give out, as happened to many of my ancestors, I have spares. In all cases, I'd cheerfully donate the old one.
....dear God, we'd be nearly immortal. We'd last as long as our brains. (You could print a new one, I suppose, but would it still be you?)
I was reading earlier this week about how scientists have rebuilt lungs to improve compatibility. Essentially, your own diseased lung is rebuilt from scratch using your own stem cells, then reimplanted. They reported that this will save hundreds of lives every year, because hundreds die while waiting on donor lungs. You can also use a donor who would otherwise be incompatible, which saves even more lives.
And I was thinking, you know what other organ could benefit from this? Kidneys. Millions worldwide depend on dialysis, because their kidneys have totally failed. There's a limited number of machines, and we can't seem to build more fast enough. But if we rebuilt the patient's own kidneys, they would no longer need dialysis. It would be merely a stopgap measure to get them through the failed period, which is no longer "the rest of your short life." In fact, the more organs we could apply this to, the better the organ donation works out. Incompatibility would cease to exist, making every donated organ more useful.
But the best aspect of all was suggested by a reader of the original article who called himself "dancupid." He suggests using 3d printing techniques to lay out an artificial extracellular matrix. If that could be done, then we never need organ donation again. Each person could have an organ bank of 5 or so of their own organs, grown from a printed extracellular matrix and their own stem cells, and kept alive in life support machines. If I get stabbed in the kidneys, I can have my loved ones take a kidney from my organ bank to the hospital, where they implant it. The stabbed one can be donated to someone who couldn't afford the printed organs (and will have its cells replaced with their own), and when I get home, I print a new one in case this happens again. If my lungs should develop cancer from all the air pollution, I have a printed replacement ready to go. If my heart should give out, as happened to many of my ancestors, I have spares. In all cases, I'd cheerfully donate the old one.
....dear God, we'd be nearly immortal. We'd last as long as our brains. (You could print a new one, I suppose, but would it still be you?)
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Cybernetic Replacement Parts
Sometimes we lose parts of our body from accidents, or worse, intentional mayhem. In the earliest of times, we'd make a crude prosthesis to allow the person to function, at least marginally, again. A peg leg wasn't as good as a real one, but at least one could hobble about without falling over. A hook for a hand allowed you to at least grab a sandwich, and operate a few tools. A patch, or a glass eye, allowed people to not vomit from seeing your empty eye socket. You still couldn't see, but you didn't look like a freak anymore, which helped immensely.
In modern times, prosthesis technology is way better. You can get a leg that resembles a real leg so strongly that most people won't notice the difference. (Well, when you're wearing shoes and pants. Take off the shoes and there's an obvious mechanical joint at the ankle, and if you wear shorts, the knee is also obviously mechanical.) You can get a rubber and metal hand that allows you to handle objects as well as your flesh one originally did. The hand can even "feel" heat, though is otherwise deficient in the sense of touch.
I think a team of prosthesis crafters and neurologists should team of for a next generation of prosthetics that tie into the nervous system. We could have artificial hands that have a true sense of touch, one that works as well as our flesh hands. We could have "eyes" made of camera that allow true vision. (We currently have cameras that are on the sides of dark glasses, that have an inductive tie into the nervous system, allowing a very low resolution greyscale vision. It's enough to walk around and not walk face first into a wall. Most sightless people who've received it describe it as more distracting than useful.) Neurologists would be part of the team because the prosthesis would have to receive its operating signals from the nervous system, and send data back, and using the part would be not any different than using the part you had before.
I'd suggest having the prosthesis surgically grafted to remaining bone and muscle, making it a replacement for what was lost. It should have integrated blood vessels, with "vampire" power support, a system that powers itself by extracting glucose from blood and burning that for energy, as your body does now. This technology exists now, but is rarely used.
And ultimately, I'd like to see a cyberbrain developed. A part that attaches to my nervous system and extends the ability of my brain. I know that this is possible from experiments in which mice brain cells were grafted onto electronic chips, and they integrated into each other. The resulting system was then taught to operate a flight simulator. Immediately, I would expect to achieve sharper senses. Vision uses a huge amount of our neural processing ability, but if one loses it, the brain concentrates on the other four senses, which become significantly sharper. It would also, as a mechanical part, be able to interface with non-brain objects as well. Perhaps it could connect to a computer, which I could now operate by thinking commands.
At some point in this process, I think we could develop prosthetics that are superior to our original parts. Imagine having the arms of a body builder, but not needing to exercise. Camera-based cybernetic eyes will never develop Glaucoma, cataracts, presbyopia, or macular degeneration, and would also lack the "blind spot" that our eyes have from the retina being on the wrong side of the back of our eye. Cybernetic ears could be made that respond to frequencies higher or lower than current human hearing allows, and could be made arbitrarily more or less sensitive according to the needs of the situation. (Or could even be turned off for meditation or sleeping. No more being bothered at 4am by some obnoxious guy with his stereo up way too loud.) Even obesity becomes a thing of the past. If you eat too much, you could plug yourself into the wall and power your house for a bit. (Your power bill promptly becomes replaced with your grocery bill.)
I'd also like to see cybernetic replacements for organs, which could save millions of lives worldwide. If I had an artificial heart as good (or better) as my current biological one, I'd cheerfully replace it, and my original biological one could keep alive a person who would otherwise die. (This assuming that the dying person opposes cybernetic replacements as "unnatural" or something. More likely, those dying of heart disease are the ones who wind up with artificial hearts.) Artificial kidneys would make the expensive and difficult process of dialysis a thing of the past. Artificial livers would make hepatitis a thing of the past, as its mechanical nature proves impossible to infect. Also, cirrosis as caused by alcoholism no longer need kill you. Quality of life worldwide would massively improve, and organ banks would always be able to fall back on the cybernetic versions.
The research to invent these things would be very expensive. Perhaps a corporation could be persuaded to invest for the royalties, which would assuredly be massive. Expenses would be recouped, one invention at a time.
I'd like to thank the Chinese Guy for inspiring this post.
In modern times, prosthesis technology is way better. You can get a leg that resembles a real leg so strongly that most people won't notice the difference. (Well, when you're wearing shoes and pants. Take off the shoes and there's an obvious mechanical joint at the ankle, and if you wear shorts, the knee is also obviously mechanical.) You can get a rubber and metal hand that allows you to handle objects as well as your flesh one originally did. The hand can even "feel" heat, though is otherwise deficient in the sense of touch.
I think a team of prosthesis crafters and neurologists should team of for a next generation of prosthetics that tie into the nervous system. We could have artificial hands that have a true sense of touch, one that works as well as our flesh hands. We could have "eyes" made of camera that allow true vision. (We currently have cameras that are on the sides of dark glasses, that have an inductive tie into the nervous system, allowing a very low resolution greyscale vision. It's enough to walk around and not walk face first into a wall. Most sightless people who've received it describe it as more distracting than useful.) Neurologists would be part of the team because the prosthesis would have to receive its operating signals from the nervous system, and send data back, and using the part would be not any different than using the part you had before.
I'd suggest having the prosthesis surgically grafted to remaining bone and muscle, making it a replacement for what was lost. It should have integrated blood vessels, with "vampire" power support, a system that powers itself by extracting glucose from blood and burning that for energy, as your body does now. This technology exists now, but is rarely used.
And ultimately, I'd like to see a cyberbrain developed. A part that attaches to my nervous system and extends the ability of my brain. I know that this is possible from experiments in which mice brain cells were grafted onto electronic chips, and they integrated into each other. The resulting system was then taught to operate a flight simulator. Immediately, I would expect to achieve sharper senses. Vision uses a huge amount of our neural processing ability, but if one loses it, the brain concentrates on the other four senses, which become significantly sharper. It would also, as a mechanical part, be able to interface with non-brain objects as well. Perhaps it could connect to a computer, which I could now operate by thinking commands.
At some point in this process, I think we could develop prosthetics that are superior to our original parts. Imagine having the arms of a body builder, but not needing to exercise. Camera-based cybernetic eyes will never develop Glaucoma, cataracts, presbyopia, or macular degeneration, and would also lack the "blind spot" that our eyes have from the retina being on the wrong side of the back of our eye. Cybernetic ears could be made that respond to frequencies higher or lower than current human hearing allows, and could be made arbitrarily more or less sensitive according to the needs of the situation. (Or could even be turned off for meditation or sleeping. No more being bothered at 4am by some obnoxious guy with his stereo up way too loud.) Even obesity becomes a thing of the past. If you eat too much, you could plug yourself into the wall and power your house for a bit. (Your power bill promptly becomes replaced with your grocery bill.)
I'd also like to see cybernetic replacements for organs, which could save millions of lives worldwide. If I had an artificial heart as good (or better) as my current biological one, I'd cheerfully replace it, and my original biological one could keep alive a person who would otherwise die. (This assuming that the dying person opposes cybernetic replacements as "unnatural" or something. More likely, those dying of heart disease are the ones who wind up with artificial hearts.) Artificial kidneys would make the expensive and difficult process of dialysis a thing of the past. Artificial livers would make hepatitis a thing of the past, as its mechanical nature proves impossible to infect. Also, cirrosis as caused by alcoholism no longer need kill you. Quality of life worldwide would massively improve, and organ banks would always be able to fall back on the cybernetic versions.
The research to invent these things would be very expensive. Perhaps a corporation could be persuaded to invest for the royalties, which would assuredly be massive. Expenses would be recouped, one invention at a time.
I'd like to thank the Chinese Guy for inspiring this post.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Artificial Retina
Biological eyes last for only a limited amount of time. Most people lose the ability to focus their eyes by the time they are 50, requiring bifocal lenses to see either near or far, and at some point their retina clouds over, a condition known medically as a cataract, further robbing the person of their ability to see.
Now, Discovery News is reporting that medical researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have produced artificial retinas for restoring sight in people who are blind due to retinal problems.
Artifical retinas actually already exist, being focusable bags of saline water that restore the existing ability of the eye to see, solving the problem for people with cataracts but not presbyopia. This system is different: It turns the eye into a low-resolution camera that feeds directly to the brain. The camera is good for the user's entire remaining life. It contains a battery that can be recharged inductively, so the user can recharge it with a small electric pad on their face, perhaps while sleeping.
This is encouraging, and I think within my lifetime, someone will invent artificial eyes that can see better than biological ones, and it will become worth it to have ones eyes outright replaced.
Now, Discovery News is reporting that medical researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have produced artificial retinas for restoring sight in people who are blind due to retinal problems.
Artifical retinas actually already exist, being focusable bags of saline water that restore the existing ability of the eye to see, solving the problem for people with cataracts but not presbyopia. This system is different: It turns the eye into a low-resolution camera that feeds directly to the brain. The camera is good for the user's entire remaining life. It contains a battery that can be recharged inductively, so the user can recharge it with a small electric pad on their face, perhaps while sleeping.
This is encouraging, and I think within my lifetime, someone will invent artificial eyes that can see better than biological ones, and it will become worth it to have ones eyes outright replaced.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Artificial Heart Recipient
I love it when my whackjob ideas are vindicated. In Singapore, a woman now has a non-beating artificial heart similar to the one I described.
Well, actually, no. The design she got was different, according to sources at MIT. Hers is a continuously pumping bar, my design calls for a heart-shaped pump that speeds up and slows down. Still, proof that a beat isn't strictly necessary does leave me encouraged.
Our best wishes to Ms. So'ot, I hope her new heart allows her to live a long life.
Well, actually, no. The design she got was different, according to sources at MIT. Hers is a continuously pumping bar, my design calls for a heart-shaped pump that speeds up and slows down. Still, proof that a beat isn't strictly necessary does leave me encouraged.
Our best wishes to Ms. So'ot, I hope her new heart allows her to live a long life.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Artificial Spine
Spinal injuries are the worst. Your ability to move your body depends on the nerves in your spine having an uninterrupted line to the muscle you want to move. If you injure your spine bones, you'll likely break this nerve and be paralyzed from that point down. The very idea of this scares the bejeebers out of me. (I thankfully am in a field that would allow me to work even if nearly totally paralyzed, but it would be much much harder.)
Thankfully, research has shown that a certain blue dye is helpful in reconnecting the nerves, so injury based paralysis may be a thing of the past. (As reported by biology student and generally awesome Blag Hag.)
But, there are other things that can go wrong. Someone in my family had a condition where the bones in his spine had their nerve-hole slowly close up until it pinched the nerve. In his later years, he moved very slowly, and had a bit of a hunch. This was hard on him, as before he was strong and athletic, with great posture.
For this condition, the usual treatment now is to cut open the spine bones and replace them with other, non-growing bones, typically a cadaver-donated thigh section. Eep. I'm going to try an artificial solution.
The spine needs rigid parts to shield the nerves from trauma, but also flexible parts in case the spine needs to move slightly. (Like if you're bowing, bending down to reach something on the floor, nodding, or the like.) The natural spine uses bone for the rigid part, and cartilage disks for the flexible part. Artificial replacements for the disks already exist. The 1337 MD would know better than me, but I think I would use titanium cylinders to replace the bone section. Titanium is very rigid, hard to bend, and should provide great protection to the spinal cord. If need be we can also attach fins to make it more like the natural spine. The ribs must also attach to this, probably pinned in place the way that a weak knee is often reinforced.
This artificial spine would be structurally stronger than the natural kind, but might have other disadvantages. I am not a medical doctor, so am unaware of what those disadvantages might be.
Thankfully, research has shown that a certain blue dye is helpful in reconnecting the nerves, so injury based paralysis may be a thing of the past. (As reported by biology student and generally awesome Blag Hag.)
But, there are other things that can go wrong. Someone in my family had a condition where the bones in his spine had their nerve-hole slowly close up until it pinched the nerve. In his later years, he moved very slowly, and had a bit of a hunch. This was hard on him, as before he was strong and athletic, with great posture.
For this condition, the usual treatment now is to cut open the spine bones and replace them with other, non-growing bones, typically a cadaver-donated thigh section. Eep. I'm going to try an artificial solution.
The spine needs rigid parts to shield the nerves from trauma, but also flexible parts in case the spine needs to move slightly. (Like if you're bowing, bending down to reach something on the floor, nodding, or the like.) The natural spine uses bone for the rigid part, and cartilage disks for the flexible part. Artificial replacements for the disks already exist. The 1337 MD would know better than me, but I think I would use titanium cylinders to replace the bone section. Titanium is very rigid, hard to bend, and should provide great protection to the spinal cord. If need be we can also attach fins to make it more like the natural spine. The ribs must also attach to this, probably pinned in place the way that a weak knee is often reinforced.
This artificial spine would be structurally stronger than the natural kind, but might have other disadvantages. I am not a medical doctor, so am unaware of what those disadvantages might be.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
An Artificial Heart for Michael Wyngre
Since 2004, Michael Wyngre and his finance have been asking for donations for his ailing heart. Mr. Wyngre has cardiomyopathy, a condition in which his heart muscles are continuously weakening. Without a heart transplant, he will soon die, and he's very worried about not being able to pay the doctor enough to actually perform the surgery. (While in the United States a hospital is required to save the life of anyone who enters it, even if they are unable to pay, this doesn't guarantee that he'll be on the organ donation waiting list. If he goes into the emergency room with a dying heart and there's no replacement, there's not much the hospital can do.)
Thinking about his case gave me an idea for an artificial heart, based on a few assumptions:
1. The heart primarily functions as a pump, and does not chemically alter the blood as it pushes it. (Other than the sheerly metabolic activities that all cells do, the heart does not work for free.)
2. The body counts on certain conditions that the heart puts into the circulatory system, namely the repeated increase and decrease in pressure.
3. A rotational pump, unlike a conventional one, would not damage the red blood cells as it pushes them. Conventional pumps would tear the cells.
4. There is an invention as of 2003 that can oxidize glucose to produce electricity, under a mechanism similar to that actually used by bodily cells.
5. The point of failure of most currently existing artificial hearts, such as the Jarvik-7 (a brilliant piece of engineering, incidentally,) is the failure of the valves. This heart should rely on pressure to keep blood flowing in the correct direction.
Okay, so I imagine a plastic structure that the major arteries and veins connect to. At the pulmonary vein's connection, a device siphons off some of the blood to oxidize for electricity. The blood is pushed into a rotational pump, that pumps the blood into the aorta. The rotational pump is repeatedly switched from high speed in one direction, to off, to simulate the start-stop enough of a biological heart. A microchip with a quartz timer should control the action. All of this on the left side.
On the right side, we have mostly deoxygenated blood that needs to be pushed into the lungs. It should receive power from the left side, and again, have a microchip controlled rotational pump to speed the blood to 120 mm Hg pressure, and then slow it to 80 mm Hg. Just like the left side, but this connects to the pulmonary artery, thus making the left side functional.
The device should be inserted while the patient's heart is stopped and cardiopulmonary action is artificially controlled for the patient by a Cardiopulmonary bypass machine (CPB). It would replace the heart entirely in function.
Before being implanted in any person, a number of tests should be performed. The FDA assuredly has a program for approval of medical prosthetics, but there are two others tests that I would want to try before even attempting the FDA's tests.
The first test would involve a maze of plastic tubing, 40 - 100 feet long, with a pressure meter at some point. The maze would be filled with a glucose solution to resemble blood. The pressure meter should fluctuate between 120 mg Hg and 80 mm Hg, the measurements of healthy blood pressure, all without leak or abrupt rise or drop in pressure.
The second test would be to replace the heart of a pig bought from a slaughterhouse. If the pig can live for at least 1 year with only the artificial heart, then it's ready for FDA testing. If it doesn't, the pig was destined to be a ham sandwich anyway.
This heart could take some of the pressure off the need for hearts, as there are far more people in need of heart replacement than donated hearts.
EDIT: Since posting this story, I can find no new information about Mr. Wyngre. I'm going to assume that he passed away, but my point here still stands for other people with congestive heart failure or other need of heart transplant.
Thinking about his case gave me an idea for an artificial heart, based on a few assumptions:
1. The heart primarily functions as a pump, and does not chemically alter the blood as it pushes it. (Other than the sheerly metabolic activities that all cells do, the heart does not work for free.)
2. The body counts on certain conditions that the heart puts into the circulatory system, namely the repeated increase and decrease in pressure.
3. A rotational pump, unlike a conventional one, would not damage the red blood cells as it pushes them. Conventional pumps would tear the cells.
4. There is an invention as of 2003 that can oxidize glucose to produce electricity, under a mechanism similar to that actually used by bodily cells.
5. The point of failure of most currently existing artificial hearts, such as the Jarvik-7 (a brilliant piece of engineering, incidentally,) is the failure of the valves. This heart should rely on pressure to keep blood flowing in the correct direction.
Okay, so I imagine a plastic structure that the major arteries and veins connect to. At the pulmonary vein's connection, a device siphons off some of the blood to oxidize for electricity. The blood is pushed into a rotational pump, that pumps the blood into the aorta. The rotational pump is repeatedly switched from high speed in one direction, to off, to simulate the start-stop enough of a biological heart. A microchip with a quartz timer should control the action. All of this on the left side.
On the right side, we have mostly deoxygenated blood that needs to be pushed into the lungs. It should receive power from the left side, and again, have a microchip controlled rotational pump to speed the blood to 120 mm Hg pressure, and then slow it to 80 mm Hg. Just like the left side, but this connects to the pulmonary artery, thus making the left side functional.
The device should be inserted while the patient's heart is stopped and cardiopulmonary action is artificially controlled for the patient by a Cardiopulmonary bypass machine (CPB). It would replace the heart entirely in function.
Before being implanted in any person, a number of tests should be performed. The FDA assuredly has a program for approval of medical prosthetics, but there are two others tests that I would want to try before even attempting the FDA's tests.
The first test would involve a maze of plastic tubing, 40 - 100 feet long, with a pressure meter at some point. The maze would be filled with a glucose solution to resemble blood. The pressure meter should fluctuate between 120 mg Hg and 80 mm Hg, the measurements of healthy blood pressure, all without leak or abrupt rise or drop in pressure.
The second test would be to replace the heart of a pig bought from a slaughterhouse. If the pig can live for at least 1 year with only the artificial heart, then it's ready for FDA testing. If it doesn't, the pig was destined to be a ham sandwich anyway.
This heart could take some of the pressure off the need for hearts, as there are far more people in need of heart replacement than donated hearts.
EDIT: Since posting this story, I can find no new information about Mr. Wyngre. I'm going to assume that he passed away, but my point here still stands for other people with congestive heart failure or other need of heart transplant.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
