Seven young patients have new bladders thanks to tissue engineering and their own cells.
Doctors grow bladder cells and produce rebuilt organ
Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston have reconstructed the defective bladders of seven young patients using the patients' own cells, marking the first time that tissue engineering has rebuilt a complex internal organ in humans, a top medical journal reported yesterday.
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Someday, scientists believe, they will be able to routinely regrow failing organs using tissue engineering, which takes the patient's cells, cultivates them to grow along a scaffold that gives them the needed form, and then re-implants them where needed