For the first time, it is possible to grow a fully functional organ – the thymus – in the body of a mouse, according to the journal Nature Cell Biology.
The thymus gland is a gland located just behind the breastbone, near the heart. It is essential for the development of the body’s immunity. It makes the cells of the immune system – T lymphocytes – able to fight infection.
In humans, the thymus grows until the age of 2, remains large until puberty (then it weighs about 25 grams, then begins to shrink (after the age of 60 it may weigh less than 0,5 grams).
Scientists from the center of regenerative medicine at the University of Edinburgh managed to reprogram a group of cells taken from a mouse embryo that, when combined with helper cells and transplanted into the body of another mouse, they transformed into a functioning thymus with a typical structure – it has a cortex and a core and prepares lymphocytes for action T.
Last year, Austrian scientists managed to grow brains in the laboratory with a developmental level that corresponds to a nine-week-old fetus. Since the thymus is much simpler than the brain, scientists in Edinburgh have succeeded in obtaining a fully functional organ.
According to the authors of the research, growing organs in the patient’s body could become an alternative to transplants. For example, people who need a bone marrow transplant and children born without a functioning thymus, and the elderly whose thymus has atrophied, could be helped. However, it will be years before that happens. For example, you need to make sure that the implanted cells do not multiply uncontrolledly and that you do not develop a tumor.
So far, successful attempts to recreate organs in humans have concerned objects that are relatively easy to grow – blood vessels, trachea or bladder. To create them, scientists seeded with cells a scaffold made of dissolving material in the body, and then implanted the whole into the patient. In the case of the thymus, it was enough to inject the mice. (PAP)