Laboratory-grown vaginas implanted in patients

http://www.kurzweilai.net/laboratory-grown-vaginas-implanted-in-patients

by ca98am79 • 12 years ago

173 76 12 years ago

simsicon• 12 years ago

lol the comment by cam44 in the post.

51Cards• 12 years ago

Sex industry jokes aside it has been amazing to watch this field of research advance. While still limited to relatively simple structures (tracheas, vaginas, cartilage, etc.) this is helping actual patients now, not just lab demos. Imagine when we can grow a new eye, kidney, lung, or heart.

I love what our industry does with technology but to me it still pales in comparison with things like bio-engineering. Perhaps that's just my perspective.

EDIT: Attaching a bit of a personal outlook. I am about a month away from having a tumor removed and the primary surgery doesn't bother me as much as the reconstruction process that will be required after. Having my own tissues grown to fill in the hole would definitely change my perspective.

trhway• 12 years ago

Imagine when we can grow a new eye, kidney, lung, or heart.

Imagine that we can grow _better_ eye, kidney, ... extra eye, kidney...

jksmith2• 12 years ago

Huge ramifications for religion. Thinking of Mark 8:22. To know God, you must become... We have to be ok with this at some point.

Pitarou• 12 years ago

I'm curious to know whether this could be offered to M->F transsexuals.

Kabacaru2• 12 years ago

I think this technology might be even more useful for trans men, where unlike trans women there's less flesh available to sculpt the structures you want.

bostonpete• 12 years ago

Why would a trans man want a laboratory grown vagina?

peterwwillis• 12 years ago

Using skin grafts and prosthetics they can already create the structures they want, so this would merely make a slightly more realistic looking structure, but probably not make it 'functional'. There's a number of active processes that would have to be reproduced, and I doubt there's sufficient existing wiring/processes in place to create the same effects. If you just don't have the wiring, it's difficult to make it work organically. But I can completely believe it will be possible in the future to create synthetic pumps to induce erection, and redirecting female ejaculation through the phallus should be simple enough.

neona• 12 years ago

I don't feel like finding the source, but iirc one of the articles covering this mentioned that they actually managed to grow a penis before they did vaginas, so that is indeed very good news for transmen. Whether it's been actually attached to someone successfully is a different question of course..

PhasmaFelis3• 12 years ago

Indeed. The current state of the art in vaginoplasty is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing; I think elasticity could be improved, but transwomen who can afford it are pretty well-served already. (Although affording it is kind of a huge deal; if this tech could be made significantly cheaper than standard vaginoplasty, it would be an enormous benefit to a lot of women.)

Phalloplasty, on the other hand, is somewhat disappointing right now--mainly because we can't yet create erectile tissue, so they have to resort to thing like pumps to get an erection. If we could create fully-functional penises, a lot of FTMs would be very happy.

anon45• 12 years ago

I would imagine they would need to replace a lot more tissue in the pelvic region compared to implanting a new vagina in a genetic woman who already has all the required surrounding tissue.

tokenadult• 12 years ago

The journal The Lancet, which published the peer-reviewed case report[1] on the latest news commented on in the submission here, makes available the full text of a commentary article from 2011[2] about the work of the same doctor, who has worked on several kinds of replacement human organs.

My alma mater university is one of several centers around the world of research on growing human tissues on spatial matrices of various kinds to grow replacement organ parts (e.g., heart valves) or organs (e.g., tracheae).[3] I had the pleasure of touring one of the labs here with one of my children, and the researchers in the lab said the research involves experimenting with different materials to form the matrix on which the human cells grow, and of course learning what three-dimensional form of the matrix will produce the best replacement part, with plenty of other issues to research besides. This path of research is one of the reasons why I think it is quite plausible that incremental improvements in life expectancy at middle age and old age, which have been steady throughout my lifetime,[4] will continue as each reader of Hacker News reaches middle age and old age.

[1] Abstract of "Tissue-engineered autologous vaginal organs in patients: a pilot cohort study"

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...

[2] http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...

[3] http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2010/UR_CONTENT_17680...

[4] http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....

http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...

graeham3• 12 years ago

The work behind this is the result of a huge effort, starting 20-30 years ago. Some people had given up on the promise of tissue engineering - one of my mentors suggested just over a year ago to me that the field was a poor choice to start a career in due to too many researchers and not enough progress. Its a very active field of research, and practically every university with a life sciences or bioengineering department will be doing some sort of work on it.

Thanks for posting the journal links.

We're not done yet. Most of the currently feasible organs are relatively simple in geometry and homogenety. More complex organs like the kidneys, liver, and espessially brain are probably exponentially harder to make. I personally think we'll have nanotechnologies and regenerative techniques that will leap-frog lab-grown organs before we are making more complex organs (which will be the desired approach unless, as in these cases, the organ is absent). A major disadvantage of lab-grown organs is they still need major surgery to implant.

I also think we will soon find (if we haven't already) that the limit on human lifetime and quality is from diet and excercise, and that these approaches get much more gains per dollar. We will soon find (if we haven't already) that health is limited by resources, not science. Prevention before intervention.

(PhD student in Bioengineering. I don't work in tissue engineering but most of the people in my office do.)

ehsanu1• 12 years ago

But prevention is impossible, metabolic damage would at best be slowed down with the right diet and exercise, and not all that much it seems. At least some of the damage is also quite independent of those factors as well. Repairing our bodies seems like the clearest approach to real longevity, regardless of the specific technique.

(No bioengineering background here though, so what do I know.)

ansible2• 12 years ago

More complex organs like the kidneys, liver, [...]

Interesting. I was under the impression that the liver was going to be one of the easier ones, due to its own ability to regenerate. That's not to say that it's going to just automatically hook up the bile duct and such...

hyp0• 12 years ago

While an artifical ear or eye has practical benefits, genitials might mean more to the recipients. Hard to tell: which would you rather go without?

It mentions that nerves grew into the structure, but doesn't explicitly state how well feeling was restored.

Restoring the related organs, uterus, fallopian tubes and especially the eggs themselves, still seems like science-fiction - at least, for now.

astrieanna• 12 years ago

Considering that the 4 patients were teenage girls born without vaginas, it seems unlikely that they'd be able to tell how it compares to non-artificial one. Maybe that would be included in another study, on using it as a replacement (after injury/cancer).

GeneralMayhem• 12 years ago

Yes, but at least now it's two-weeks-into-the-future science fiction, not Star Wars science fiction.

ijk3• 12 years ago

There's a cultural bias against medical treatment for stuff that is less visible or critical. There's a general consensus that things like eyes or legs are useful, even though surveys of paraplegic patients report that partial restoration of genital sensation is more meaningful to them than walking.

Fewer people think about less obvious senses like _tasting_ and _smelling_, to the point that it can be difficult to get the condition taken seriously, even though complete loss of smell can be highly traumatic.

anon45• 12 years ago

There is a class of people who regard humans (including themselves) as highly advanced and complex robots which slot neatly into worker roles in society, defined by their objective utility. Such a view basically means things that you don't need to function are frivolties and spending resources towards guaranteeing the personal joy of people is an anathema. It kind of seriously makes me consider the "philosophical zombie" hypothesis.

cdjk2• 12 years ago

It's interesting that you should mention smell, since I was born without a sense of smell - the term is anosmia. It is very poorly studied, and most studies deal with people who lose their sense of smell due to neurological diseases or head trauma.

In my case it's clearly genetic (my mom and her dad both can't smell), and almost no one studies it. From what I've read I'd much rather be born without a sense of smell than lose it, since that can be very traumatic.

brianbreslin2• 12 years ago

Do you think we'll start seeing people with bad livers/kidneys/organs pre-ordering new ones and having them frozen/stored? if i'm some rich 80 year old tycoon with a bum heart, i could see myself having new versions of all my parts stored for me at a lab for when i need them.

anon45• 12 years ago

Then other parts of your body would start failing in interesting ways. Interesting from a scientific perspective, but I'd imagine pretty horrible from a human one. Your heart and kidneys don't fail by themselves, your entire body suffers cumulative damage from mistreatment and it's just those parts that fail in a terminal way first.

dragonwriter2• 12 years ago

Well, once we can solve the problem of the first things to fail, we can work on solving the problem of the next set of things that fail, etc.

arjunnarayan• 12 years ago

Right, but oftentimes (but not always) the "cumulative damage" is causally linked to a single source. For example, when your kidneys fail, the rest of your body suffers crazy loads, since the kidneys are tasked with maintaining electrolytic balances in your blood, which other organs depend on. For example, failing kidneys don't clean out potassium from your bloodstream, which causes your heart to come under increased load and usually results in sudden cardiac death.

So replacing a failing kidney early on will keep your heart in a much better shape. Of course, in the long run, you'd need to replace everything, and in the very long run there's always cancer...

bkmartin• 12 years ago

That is not necessarily true. There are lots of instances where a specific organ is experiencing failure and could be replaced and the rest of you is pretty normal functioning. Especially in kidney failures or injuries, liver failures or injuries, and hearts as well. Think about all the people on dialysis. Lots of them are awaiting a new kidney from a donor. What if, instead of waiting 2 years for a match they grow you a new one in a few months? Same thing with the incredibly regenerative liver. Hearts might be another story, not sure there. We'd probably need to be able to grow those completely outside the body first.

lbotos• 12 years ago

Have you seen "The Island"? If not, I think you'll really enjoy that film. It's a great look into the ethics of that idea and one possible scenario that could play out in a utopian/dystopian future. Don't read any more about it unless you don't want to watch it. It's better with "fresh eyes".

andyzweb• 12 years ago

"If only you could see the things I've seen with your eyes"

brianbreslin2• 12 years ago

I have seen it. There was also a movie with arnold schwartzenneger in it the 6th day where they clone people to replace them when they die, or before they die. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216216/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_19

boiler_up800• 12 years ago

I haven't seen The Island, but another really good book that I remember from my teens which featured this concept was "The House of the Scropion". Instead of using laboratory organs as replacements though, they use real people.

omnisci• 12 years ago

I'm counting on it:) I think we can see something like this in our life time the way that information is moving.

Shinkei2• 12 years ago

Physician here. I read this paper when it was posted on Reddit a few days ago and it was very impressive.

I'll link to the discussion because the top comment was comprehensive and summarizes the published article:

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/22qhob/laboratorygr...

To address questions of how this can be applied to other organs, growing tissue like a trachea or skin is becoming easier. They grow the cells on a scaffold and then you have a tissue. Organs are much more complex and a penis is an organ. We are not at that level of sophistication to grow an entire, functional organ ex-vivo, at least for human use.

travoltaj• 12 years ago

Do you have any insight into what would be the effect of this on Sex Reassignment Surgeries?

Shinkei2• 12 years ago

I wish I did. It's by no means an area of expertise for me, but I would guess that this technique is extremely expensive and will remain limited--at least for the short term--to use in cases of genetic females that require replacement of their vagina due to its congenital absence of loss from cancer/injury.

The location of blood vessels, nerves, etc. is different in genetic male vs. female and may require a totally different approach.

Fomite• 12 years ago

Unfortunately, limited for now. The implantation was done in patients who have most of the "infrastructure" already in place, rather than the somewhat more dramatic restructuring required for sex reassignment surgery.

But it is a very promising first step.

undoware• 12 years ago

As a trans woman, I'm very happy about this sort of advance, but I question why I'm seeing it at the top of my HN feed.

A lot of people here seem to REALLY LIKE vaginas.

Just saying.

arbitrage• 12 years ago

Is it that unexpected that hackers enjoy reading stories about breakthrough medical hacks? This is pretty amazing.

logfromblammo2• 12 years ago

No. It is not amazing. This is a natural and expected progression of bioengineering technology, and rather easily understood.

More complex organs will require either decellularized donor organs or volume-printed extracellular matrix scaffolds, combined with induced pluripotence in autologous donor cells. It will be a while before it becomes cheap enough for hobbyist hacking, but have no doubt that someone visiting this site right now will be biohacking on himself or herself in the future. I'm guessing magnetite organelles injected by syringe into the palms and fingertips would be a popular first mod.

anon45• 12 years ago

What kind of person doesn't like vaginas? Except gay men, except those of them that do like vaginas in the aesthetic sense. It would be like not liking breasts or abs or butts or legs or penises. I mean, you don't need to like them sexually, it's just that, well, they're nice to look at.

quiesce• 12 years ago

Quite a few gay-identifying men go out of their way to make sure you know how disgusting female genitalia are to them.

PhasmaFelis3• 12 years ago

I'm bi, and I think both sets of genitals look pretty ridiculous when not seen through the lens of arousal. The rest of the body I can generally appreciate aesthetically, but genitals are just weird.

stcredzero• 12 years ago

They are amazing! The different size ranges they must accommodate, including childbirth, make them an evolutionary "engineering" marvel. If the lab grown ones can do the same, that would make then an actual engineering marvel.

breadbox• 12 years ago

Possibly. On the other hand, the comments on this post seem to mainly show interest in the medical technology. (Just imagine the top-voted comments on a similar post on Reddit...)

Raticide• 12 years ago

Here's the Reddit thread;

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/22qhob/laboratorygr...

frozenport• 12 years ago

Fun Fact: Laboratory-grown babies implanted in patients happened decades ago.

ChristianMarks• 12 years ago

I want one.

Laboratory-grown vaginas implanted in patients

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