New strategy helps build synthetic organs from scratch. This enabled the researchers to grow functioning liver tissue in the lab that could be transplanted into mice with liver disease.
Tinglong Dai, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing; Guihua Wang, University of Texas at Dallas et Ronghuo Zheng, The University of Texas at Austin
As policymakers weigh financial aid for the airline industry, they have an opportunity to help make the US organ transplantation system more equitable at the same time.
Thousands of Canadians are on waiting lists for life-saving organ transplants. An opt-out organ donor system, like the one Nova Scotia is implementing, could reduce avoidable deaths and suffering.
Organs from gay men or injecting drug users, often rejected for transplants, could safely be used, so long as donors test negative for infections such as HIV, and hepatitis B and C.
Tobias Deuse, University of California, San Francisco
The idea behind regenerative medicine is that the patient is both the donor and recipient of healthy tissue grown from stem cells. But sometimes the transplanted cells are rejected. Now we know why.
The idea of human-animal hybrids can raise a lot of questions and it’s easy to feel they are “unnatural” because they violate the boundaries between species.
As the rate of obesity in the US rises, transplant centers are debating whether to accept organ donations from the obese. A new study suggests that oversized hearts are safe to use.
There is a stark mismatch between the elements required of a modern news story – unique, high impact – and the reality of medical research being slow, meticulous and progressing one step at a time.
Most Canadians support organ donation after death, but fewer than 25 per cent have registered to donate their organs. What can be done to encourage more registrations?
International standards ban publication of research that involves any biological material from executed prisoners, that lacks human research ethics committee approval and that lacks consent of donors.
Visiting Professor in Biomedical Ethics, Murdoch Children's Research Institute; Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law, University of Melbourne; Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, University of Oxford