Do-it-yourself Organs

be disgusting. While your teens and twenties were about identifying and emphasizing your best features, your late thirties and forties are about fighting back decay. We all mentally prepare ourselves for wrinkles, but wrinkles are not the problem. It's the unexpected groceries. For example, your mouth, Dear God, your mouth, no matter how diligent you are about brushing and flossing, which is never diligent enough for that show off, dental

hygenis of yours. At some point, you start waking up every day with a mouth that smells like a snail left in the sun. You can fix it as soon as you get up. You brush and use mouth wash. But there's something about knowing you woke up with hot mothball mouth that makes you feel old. I think God designed our mouths to die first to help us slowly transition to the grave. But I'm a big believer in intelligent design, and by that I mean I love Akida. It's a great quote because she really gets to the

heart of the matter, right, Yeah. Yeah, because especially as we're living longer, our our mouths are kind of dying first, and then after our mouth dies, other things start to die as well, all these various components that give out, like like the brake pads in a in a car after you know, however, many thousands of miles. And this has been weighing heavy in our mind because of course we've been doing research into longevity. Yeah, and we just

did a podcast on the whole birthday candles thing. Yeah, and it is it is like a car that the longer it goes, the more you're gonna have to replace this bit and this bit and and how do we do it? Right? Well, it turns out that you can probably grow your own organs at some point and just pop them into the microwave exactly. And that's what we're gonna be talking about. In this podcast, and it gets

really crazy. I mean it's just really mind blowing stuff. Um, but let's let's start with the mouth that Dies first. To quote that. Yeah, and that's a by the way, that's an awesome book, Bossy Pants for anybody who's a Tina fe fan. Like, we are so growing teeth, growing new teeth. Now, obviously we go through the we have the baby teeth that come out, we lose those. Most of us. I think we have one of our coworker

still has all of their baby teeth. Really yeah, that's I have one, but it really all yeah really yeah, it's hanging on because I just made that up about the person with all their baby teeth. Oh, I was like, maybe that's just like it was a rumor that just got really you know, circulated and out of hand. There. Wait, so I don't know much about baby pee teeth. Apparently you can you can keep one of them. You're allowed as long as it's hanging out there, and it's fine.

I don't have an adult tooth under it. Yeah, so there you go. Well, hang in there, baby tooth. But anyway, most of us lose all these. Then we grow these adult teeth. But then that's it. These teeth have to last you your entire life, and if they fall out, then you just you have to replace them with like denters and various it's a ridge work, or you can go old school with the wooden. As I say, you could carve your own yeah, you know, if you're a woodworker.

But it turns out that that this piece of vital bone that we need right could possibly be replicated. Yeah, the the the age is coming, and in some respect it's already here. When you could when we can grow new teeth. Don't ask your dinners about it yet. We're not we're not. We're not there yet. But but just like a little background in some of the crazy and bizarre stuff that we've done. Um, alright, so grow when you grow teeth naturally in your head, you have toothbuds

or primordia. Okay, And these consist of two types of cells, um um epithelial and mezzan Schimmel cells. All right. So back in two thousand four, a team at King's College, London took epitherial cells from six weeks old mice, and they also took some of their bone marrow stem cells to replicate the other toothbud cell they were able to

create like an artificial toothbud, all right. And then after three days they transferred this material to the kidneys of other mice where they grew into intact teeth, to the kidneys in the inside the kidney, so they had like a mouse kidney growing teeth. And then the real kicker was they were able to take that material then and actually put it into the jaw of an adult mouse.

I'm sorry, I'm just still thinking about like the hag is tooth you know, Yeah, Like, isn't haggas is you know, prepared with all the different like the kidney and the liver and the traditional Scottish delicacy. Yes, yes, And so I'm just thinking, like this hag is two things stuffed in in the body cavity. Well and luckily this is of very This was this was early you know, this was back in two thousand four and two thousand nine, um.

And actually there's a blog about this speck. When this happened. Us team from Oregon they published a paper on the possible of growing teeth in a lab, So, you know, getting kind of like vat grown teeth are like, all right, I kind of pictured it as a garden of teeth

popping up. And then you know, and then in two thousand ten, Columbia University Medical Center team unveiled a this this really off awesome growth factor and fuse three dimensional scaffold and this is Yeah, we're gonna be talking a lot about this, but this, if you look at it, basically looks like somebody knitted a little tooth. Like it looks like it's made out of some sort of fiber

or something. And we use this to regenerate tissue like an action to to regenerate an actual tooth, and just around nine weeks so they direct the body's own stem cells onto the scaffolding and once the stem cells have colonized the scaffold, the tooth can grow into the socket and merge with the with the surrounding tissue in your mouth. Off see that. I think it is amazing. And that's just sort of the tip of the iceberg, right because

the same process is being used for organs. Yeah, and I should point out though, talking about all this work it takes to potentially grow another tit is this really drives home and this has come from the sun of a dentist. But take care of those teeth because even if they are, if technology is getting to the point where you're these are not the teeth you have for

life that you could potentially grow another one. Look at all that work you're gonna have to go to to do it, when maybe you should maybe I don't know, just not eat as much candy. Yeah, true, when when it eventually hits the market is not going to be inexpensive, right, Yeah, initially I can't imagine. So I would hate to see people be like, grow new teeth all right past the skittles, because yeah, that's right. That really sets up a good I think basis for what we're talking about, which is

again creating your own organs. And there's a guy named Anthony Atala. He is the director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which is a huge field right. His work focuses on growing and regenerating tissues and organs, and in two thousand and seven, Italian in a team of Harvard University researchers showed that stem cells can be harvested from the amniotic fluid of pregnant women and also

from the pant as well. This is important because those stem cells are not rejected by the body, and they tend not to develop into tumors. So those are two important factors when you're going to introduce it seforign into your body. Now, it's important to stress here that when we're talking about the human body regenerating, we're not talking about magic here. I mean, there are plenty of examples

of regeneration in other creatures sanders salamander. Of course, our bones regenerate every ten weeks, our skin every two weeks. And there's a great, great line from the author Horoki Horki Mirakami, who you know, author of the wind Up Bird Chronicle. He's a big, big Japanese author. But he he says, the body cells replace themselves every month. Even at this very moment, most everything you think you know

about me is nothing more than race. H nice, but there are limits, right, right, like even using um But I believe Anthony points out that you can use a smart biomaterials to bridge one centimeter gaps, right, And when he talks about biomaterial he's talking about something that that looks to the naked eye, like maybe material from a blouse. Yeah,

you know, tiny little postage stamp. Yeah, I mean exactly, And so that's helping to bridge the tissue and to try to get the cells in the blood supply to reach each other in order to regenerate, right, something that you wouldn't normally be able to do yourself. Yeah, kind of like a tiny splint or something. Yeah. Yeah, And that was That's such a tiny bit though, of what he's actually doing, right. He actually prefers to use organ specific cells from the person receiving a transplant or repairing

an injury when he's trying to do larger projects. Again, the stem cells from placenta and amnionic food, they contain those those optimal stem cells. And if you're a woman who has ever been pregnant, then you probably have even seen literature about whether or not you want to bank your blood cord because actually you could use your own stem cells if you wanted to later on down the road. Again, that's not going to be any new news for for women who have undergone pregnancy. My most clinical way of

saying that gotten prayers getting locked up. Yeah. But what the really cool thing is is that he has something called a bioreactor, And I'll get to that in a moment. This is something that basically is a box that you throw all of this material in and you can create

an actual organ down the road. This is the the oven, right, this is the oven organ oven, which when we do when we release this podcast, will make sure that on the House to Works blogs we have some embedded video in the blog post because there's some awesome footage of the stuff that we're about to talk about. Yeah. Yeah, it's basically like your easy bake oven for for self. Um, but what are the settings on that easy bake oven? Um? Toasty, um, soft in the metal. Yeah, well, I think more advanced.

But you know, by the time this comes out, maybe the organs will be more I mean, the ovens will be more advanced and you'll have specific buttons for heart kidney. Well, yeah, and we'll we'll actually there there's something we'll talk about it a little bit that that um is very similar

to that. But he's taking the tissue samples and then he incubates cells on a scaffold which we talked about before, and then he's putting it in this machine and then the machine stretches the cell so that they begin to get a muscle memory of expanding and contracting, so that once you put this into the human body that knows what to do. Um. And then the scaffolding is placed into the patient and disintegrate. Let me touch face on the scaffolding again. Um. Like I said, it looks kind

of like something that's knitted. If you get down close, it looks like some sort of a nano structure, and to a certain extent it is. But it's made generally made of something like collagen or some polyesters that when it's composed of something more natural, and then there's some less natural materials. But the idea is that it's it's kind of like if you had stitches that were absorbed back into your skin. You know, it just it disappears. It they it it melts away into into the body

once its purpose is gone. Yeah, scaffold thing, you know. I initially you think of like a man painting, you know, a while high up. But this is just a it's a structure, right allows it to have this three D formation. Yeah, and you basically the idea is it's it's it's kind of like paper mache where you have like a scaffold and then you put the paper mache over it and you have this and then you have the form except instead of bits of newspaper that have been dipped in

what glue, it's the cells. Yeah, absolutely. And then to get back to the bioreactor. Two, this is this box that they're they're placing it in the little oven, the easy bake oven. It has the same conditions as a human body. It's eight nine point six degrees fahrenheit with oxygen and yeah, yeah, and actually the ted dot com talk featuring Anthony I tell it shows them taking trying to create digits. Actually, and they show them taking it out of the bioreactor and then basting it with more cells.

And at this point I believe that what you're seeing is the bones of the fingers and and that the soft tissue on top of it. And it is amazing, amazing. In fact, you see them working with with muscles, like exercising, stretching them. You see them working on blood vessels with this kind of tubular scaffolding looks kind of like the Chinese finger thing, except you're you know, much smaller and like even like an ear if they're working with just

like growing an ear. Yeah. Stuff. Again, it's just so surreal to see these things coming out of the oven. There's the ear um. And one of the coolest things that they engineered a kidney um and by the way of transplant, patients are waiting for kidney so this is pretty important. Oh wait, wait, we should do the bladder first. Oh yeah, bladder was was pretty crazy because it's the first thing you touched on. It was like whoa because because blood vessels, all right, but but an actual bladder um.

And it was interesting because you have like the scaffolding, right, and there are two cell components. There's the the the inside lining cells and then the outside muscular cells. So you have to basically paint the inside of the scaffolding with the finding cells and sculpture in a way. Right, It's almost like you've got the wire mesh but the meshes the scaffolding. Yeah, like sculpture, except the piece you're creating will hold only urine and it will go inside.

Somebody's now doing Damian Hurst. Yeah, yeah, paging you. That's I mean, that's very cool. And did you have any other thoughts on the pladder? Just said it's awesome, Yeah, in general, And he also mentioned that like they had they had different sizes and he made a joke. He was joking about like, oh, we we ended up using a small medium in large, and I bet everybody would like the large, which was funny, but it but it really underlines something that will probably ramble on about here

in a minute. But at what point you get to choose with your new organs if you do grow an organ? Well yeah, And initially though they were doing pretty precise like custom custom bladders for people, and then they when they started doing in a larger scale, they just started doing the sort of one size fits all, depending or not one size fits all, but the small medium in large.

So yeah, it's a good question, Like I don't know, because you know, you know how that works out in your clothing sometimes, you know, small medium, large is different in different places. I don't know what I'm saying there, but you know what I'm saying because it makes me think of if anybody out there has ever watched the TV show technically a kids TV show, Invader Zim, there is an episode called Dark Harvest where Zim is this

little alien Boy's an animated show. Uh, this little alien who's who's pretending to be a boy in elementary school and he's not very good at taking over the earth, so he's always hatching these ridiculous schemes, and in this one, he's afraid that if he gets headlines, he's gonna end up being sent to the school nurse, and the school nurse will notice that he doesn't have human organs, and

then they'll have him, you know, he found out. So he starts harvesting organs from all the other children in the school, replacing those organs with random objects, uh, from just around the school. And eventually he's just bloated with organs because he's he's become an organ clutch. He's hoarding organs. So is that what we might be doing one day? Maybe you can't help, but think of like some like really powerful like rich old dude that just has like a whole wing of his house, yeah, devoted to to

growing spare organs. You know, like you'll have like, you know, two or three hearts. Um, you know. On we'll be like, here's my cooler full of all of my my backup. And you know he won't shop off the shelf either, and he won't go for that small meeting. We're large bladder, it'll be customed. Oh yeah, well yeah, it'll have French cuffs on it. But I wanted to talk a little

bit about that kidneys a little bit more. If anybody does check out that Ted dot com video, it's very cool because they show the miniature kidney that they created and it's actually producing urine and it's one of the strangest things I've seen in a while. It looks like a surloin steak with cafeter's protruding from it and then a bag collecting the urine. So a lot of this is still experimental, but there is one case. Luke Massala,

he was one patient who benefited from this technology. He was born with spina bifida, which affected his bladder and kidneys and um at one point. By age ten, he had undergone sixteen surgeries and was facing a life time of dialysis when he got this experimental surgery with the regenerated bladder, and he was among the first patients to receive a bladder constructed with his own cells. And today

he's fine. He's a sophomore at the University of Connecticut and he's, according to Ted dot Com, living a normal and active lifestyle. I mean, this is really one of the things we have to stop and stress it that there is there, there's someone out there. There are people out there that have organs that have been grown outside their body and put back in. Yeah, I mean they exist. I've been I've been in awe of that ever since

I read it that. I mean, just think of that, that that we have reached the point where, even in a very limited and experimental manner, we can grow an organ outside the human body and then put it inside the human body and it becomes a part of us. Again, ponder that for a moment. Okay, while we take our break, and when we get back, we're going to talk about printing your own organs. Yes, and it says it's going to get even more crazy. This presentation is brought to

you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow, and we're back oregan printing. Yeah, which, don't you hate it? Like, you know, we live in a big art office. Don't you hate it when you go to the printer and somebody's printed out eighteen kidneys and they're just lying there on on the on the calendar, and you're like, who printed these out? They're just sitting here going to waste. They're attracting mice. Yep. Someone puts

up a nasty note. Yeah, yeah, like hey, jerk. Next time you print out eighteen kidneys, make sure you pick them up. You see this in our future here at the office. Yeah, well, I mean when we talk about printing organs or we're not just I mean this is

literally like you are printing organs. You can take a printer three D printer and instead of using ink jet cartridges, you use cartridges filled with live cells which are then deposited, and you can print a two chamber heart in forty minutes and then four to six hours later the muscle cells actually contract. Wow, this is this is crazy, I know, and it's so cool to see it coming out because

it's like this little gelatinous mass coming out. It's like you're printing with jello and three D and it's just like each time across another layer of jello until you have this thing and then yeah, then and then like hours later starts pumping. Right. But as we know, if if this ever reaches a level where we can actually print our own organs on our home, you know it's just going to be the crappiest printer in the world.

You have to like reprint your heart five times, keeps getting jammed, and you're always out of whichever cellular tissue that you use the most. The magenta, I guess, yes, the magenta exactly. But those are really cool things that have been happening in the last couple of years and recently though, one of the most exciting things is something

called out of post regenerative cells and UM. I guess you could even call this section that we're about to talk about d I Y breasts, Yes, And the reason is it's because what they have found research as have found that the um parts of the body that have adipose fat cells, right, those can actually be suctioned out

and they can be used to reform breast tissue. So we're talking about doing a little life of section, getting a little fat and putting it in a centrifuge and then sorting out what you want to use, not on the same day, right right, Yeah, that's because there's a lot to do, right and then later once the cells have culture and so on and so forth, you can

use us to rebuild the breast. And what you would want to use this for, ideally is for someone who's had a mess ectomy or maybe they have one breast that they lost for both, but we'll talk about the implications of this in a moment about how it's much

more than just breast tissue. I just want to mention that the company that is doing this is called Story Therapeutics, and the CEO, Chris Calhoun, is trying to improve on this regenerative medicine that we're talking about, using these stem cell enriched adipos fat to heal and rebuild injured or damaged organs. So they took this fat and they made this huge discovery, and the discover is that the fat

cells are actually chok full of stem cells. So they realized that it probably had uses other than just recreating

breast tissue. But the reason why they focused on breast tissue is because it's a fairly easy thing to do with with something that isn't vital to are the way our body functions, right, I mean, other than breastfeeding, your breast really aren't there for much else, since certare in joke, they're What they did is they went to Japan and they initially tested uh, this reconstruction with these breast cells on Japanese women because it turns out that women in

that society who had a mastectomy would avoid public baths. And then is a huge part public baths or a huge part of the culture there. Yeah, many cultures really. I mean, it's gonna come as kind of a shock to especially some of our our u s audiences where you know, you go to the y m c A or whatever, and and every people were wearing like T

shirts and the sauna, which is disgusting, by the way. Uh. Whereas in many parts of the world, in Asia, uh, and still in some parts of Europe, you know, you still have a rich and of course in Russia you still have a rich bath culture and uh, and in certain areas of it, nudity is part of it. And therefore when you tend to find in these environments people

are more comfortable, certainly more comfortable with their nuduty than America. Um. Where Again, the idea of being naked at the y m c A s is insane and I don't understand why I was banned from there. Um. But but but but yeah, so so, even even in these environments when there would be you know, open to different body types and all that, um, the loss of something like that could make one feel excluded from a very important part

of their life. Yeah. To be clear, they weren't banished by their people, but they were just they were feeling ashamed about their bodies, and so that you know, they effectively sort of excommunicated themselves from society in that sense. They were, you know, obviously more open to this process of recreating the breast tissue, and they actually got pretty good result for actually doing something that was quite frank time.

I mean, a lot of that was guesswork at the beginning of how much you know they should use of this proprietary mix of enzymes with the tissue and so on and so forth, And like you said, it was a good test case for this technology because it wasn't for the most part. You we're not talking about life threatening situation right exactly. Here they are with this They've got this idea that these stem cell rich out of

post fat cells could be used for other purposes. They know that it can make bones that they could use

to repair facial effects and children. But what they are really finding out what it what it does great is making a new blood supply to tissue, which is really important for how we can repair our own vital organs, right because that's the problem with aging right now, is that as you had said, that our cells do repair themselves to a certain degree, but at some point, you know, you just can't bridge that supply with blood into the tissue.

So I just want to talk a little bit about this this box again, a box shows up right, the magic box that that does all the cool things to the cells makes it be able to come like this actual organ force. Yeah. Yeah. So this box is basically it basically is a cellulation device, and it's a box with scaffolding inside, which we've talked about already, and the

centrifuge and it's center. It separates the adipose tissue from stem cells, and then a mix of prop proprietary enzymes are added, and the mix is different depending on what kind of tissue you want, which is pretty amazing, right, So it's sort of like margarita mix. Okay, here you go,

um or whatever it is that you want. On the On the other end of this process, the problem is that unlike stem cells, which you could use for like two hundred plus kinds of cells in the human body, these adipose fat cells can only be used and or differentiated into fat, bone and muscle. So it's not an

end all, be all thing here. But it's pretty amazing that it's it's an alternative to having to get stem cells, which we know is a difficult process right now, and who knows in the future what that will bear out. But right now, I mean the fact that you could just go and get a tummy tuck, you know, and use those on your own rich stem cells from the audipose fat for something else perhaps is amazing. Yeah, it's great.

I love the idea of it. I do too. Now the problem is is that there are other companies that have gotten in on the game, but their process is slightly different, and they're making some claims that are a little bit dodgy, like I think I'm imagining Dr Nick from The Simpsons. Possibly, Yeah, it's a few stem shoals um. But they're saying they're making claims like the cells can be used to treat autism and type two diabetes and

so on and so forth. So you may have, you know, if you're into the subject, you may have seen it in the media a little bit. And that's a little bit of the dark side, right is that there's a lot of competition to get this to market. A stem cell smoothie is not going to make you healthier, no, no, But a Little Wheat Germs shot movie just lovely. Yeah,

so there you go. Um. I think that the key takeaway from this though, is that right now, the demand for organ transplants is has doubled in the last decade, and still we have the same amount of organs available. So what that means is that, you know, we shouldn't stop signing our organing cards on our driver's license here in the United States if we want to donate our organs. You know, there's so much need out there and that's

why they're trying to come up with this technology. So this isn't going to do away with the organ downing process by all means. And you can you can find out more about organ donation by going to how stuff works dot com. We have an article called how organ donation works. We have one called how organ transplants work. And if you live in the US, you can go

to organ donor dot gov to find out more. Other Otherwise, if you're in another country, UM would in a number of you are, you know, do a search for organ donation and then your particular country. But I want to add one more thing about about all this, because I can't help but think of the ways that this could be misused or used irresponsibly or is stupidly. And I'm instantly think, I get all these emails. Everybody gets all these emails about penis enlargement, you know, the junk mails.

So I can easily imagine a future where the junk mail becomes grow your own custom penis, and it's gonna be really weird future if that comes to past. I know, I just started thinking about sea monkeys. Yeah, for some reason. So I'm not gonna follow the logical conclusion to that. Now. I didn't the Wired article actually go into the possible um cosmetic use of this last technology for breast implants. Yeah, and that's actually the competing companies I was talking about.

That's one of the claims that they're making too. And whether or not that's something that will bear out, we don't know. But it may be that that's something that could help. I suppose, make you look dewey and sixteen year old ish, but they won't look like arts. They won't look like breast implanted breast. You will not have breast on your face. That's what I understand. Poor nipples. Okay, not yet, but who knows what the future is gonna

hold that. That's the thing. It's like we when when we when things become possible for humans, it seems like it's just an at our time until we start misusing them, it's true, or somebody loses a bet. You just had to bring that dystopian shade down on them. Yeah, yea, I understand. Well let's see, let's turn our backs from that then, and uh take a look at some quick listener mail. I think I have a few to choose from here. Well, we have some listener mail here from John.

John writes in and John says, well, what a coincidence that you have back to back podcast on aliens and platyplods pla platyplods the plural of platypus um. I've always wondered if Australia was a genetic playground for aliens, with the platypus being their greatest creation. No offense to kangaroos, Iguala bears bears right, I have because really yeah, I've been watching the a rather well done series on Netflix about ancient Aliens, and they talk about the aliens wiping

out all genetic experiments. Chamiras Sphinx in a great flight. I enjoy the show John, So um mmmmm, it's an interesting idea. I mean, clearly the platypus is is a perfect creation, but as we discussed in the podcast, I think it's farm or likely it just evolve that way. I don't know. Unassuming, right, you would never think like, oh, that's that's the alien creation. Oh you're with the aliens, now show it for a podcast day. We've voice sound

a little different, supposedly because of the cold. Yeah, all right, it's really me, honest. Let's see. I have another one here about the platypo platypose you knew it's me because I set nipples. Here's a letter from Jeremy. Hi, guys, love the Platypus show. I was surprised that you didn't bring up the character Perry, the platypus from the Disney show Phineas and Ferb. Perry is a household pet who lives a double life as a double oh seven parody agent. P You even seem to be on the verge of

it when you were discussing it's venomous quality. Maybe I just watch way more TV with my kids than I should. Keep up the great word, Jeremy, I was not familiar with the show. I think that's interesting saying that we we followed the same logic. Yeah, and uh in just one note, um, I can't remember I might uh spoke.

In the past, I have occasionally said venom when I mean poison or poison when I mean venom, and the two words are, of course not interchangeable, and to do so is elegant variation, which is the whole another thing. But anyway, venomous animals just to refresh, store toxin internally and release them through biting or stinging, uh, such as with a platypus, whereas poisonous animals usually secrete toxins through their skin and then if you touch them or heat them, uh,

then you get the poison. Any There you go, venomous, hardcore, venomous, poisonous. But that's out there. But the real take home is that they are magical. They're not really magical, but anyway, so hey, yeah, perhaps if you if you go to the right places, if you know the right spot. Um. So, if you have anything to share with us, especially about do it yourself organs of out the current technology, about where it's going or where it may lead us. We love to hear about it, so just let us know

on Facebook or Twitter. For starters, you can find us on both of those as Blow the Mind, or you could go more long form and you could email us at Blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.