Anthony Atala, one of the world’s leading experts in the field of tissue engineering, discussed the challenges and rewards associated with his work during two presentations in Whitley Auditorium Wednesday, Sept. 14.
Atala, the W.H. Boyce Professor and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, said there is still much to be learned about organ transplantation, 50 years after the first organ transplant was performed.
“Fifty years later, we’re still dealing with the same problems of organ shortage and rejection,” said Atala. Compounding the problem is the increase in demand for transplant organs. “The number of organ transplants has remained the same, about 30,000, from 1995 until now,” Atala said. “Meanwhile, the number of patients needing transplants has quadrupled.”
To combat this problem, Atala and his team of researchers have concentrated their work on regenerative medicine—growing cells, tissues and organs for therapies. Although many cells and organs are easily regenerated within the human body, growing them in a laboratory setting for future use still proves extremely difficult. So the Atala team uses special incubators, with temperatures identical to the human body, to grow tissues.
Using biopsied bladder cells, the scientists successfully grew new human bladders that were transplanted into patients with end-stage bladder disease. They have also created tracheas, ureters and urethras for transplantation.
Atala said the next frontier in regenerative medicine is the use of stem cells, which can be scientifically manipulated to create any tissue or organ in the body. He said there is a great deal of confusion among the public about stem cells and the ways they can be used.
“There is universal agreement in the medical community that reproductive cloning is bad,” said Atala. Therapeutic cloning is not the same as reproductive cloning, said Atala, since embryonic cells are combined with skin cells to produce tissue, rather than being combined with sperm cells to form a fetus.