By Warren Pole PUBLISHED: 00:12 GMT, 6 May 2012
Don’t panic, this isn’t a severed human ear – but one that’s been grown
in a laboratory at Britain’s remarkable new human body parts store.
<a href="http://s1267.photobucket.com/albums/jj559/365Wildfire/?action=view&current=article-2138956-12E8D6D6000005DC-26_634x560.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1267.photobucket.com/albums/jj559/365Wildfire/article-2138956-12E8D6D6000005DC-26_634x560.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
'This is a nose we’re growing for a patient next month,’ Professor Alexander Seifalian
says matter-of-factly, plucking a Petri dish from the bench beside him. Inside is an
utterly lifelike appendage, swimming in red goo. Alongside it is another dish containing
an ear.
His lab is little more than a series of worn wooden desktops strewn with beakers,
solutions, taps, medical jars, tubing and paperwork, and looks like a school chemistry lab.
But it’s from here that Seifalian leads University College London’s (UCL) Department of
Nanotechnology and Regenerative Medicine, which he jokingly calls the ‘human spare parts
store’.
At the cutting edge of modern medicine, Seifalian and his team are focusing on growing
replacement organs and body parts to order using a patient’s own cells. There would be
no more waiting for donors or complex reconstruction – just a quick swap.
And because the organ is made from the patient’s own cells, the risk of rejection should,
in theory, be eliminated.
Don’t panic, this isn’t a severed human ear – but one that’s been grown
in a laboratory at Britain’s remarkable new human body parts store.
<a href="http://s1267.photobucket.com/albums/jj559/365Wildfire/?action=view&current=article-2138956-12E8D6D6000005DC-26_634x560.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1267.photobucket.com/albums/jj559/365Wildfire/article-2138956-12E8D6D6000005DC-26_634x560.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
'This is a nose we’re growing for a patient next month,’ Professor Alexander Seifalian
says matter-of-factly, plucking a Petri dish from the bench beside him. Inside is an
utterly lifelike appendage, swimming in red goo. Alongside it is another dish containing
an ear.
His lab is little more than a series of worn wooden desktops strewn with beakers,
solutions, taps, medical jars, tubing and paperwork, and looks like a school chemistry lab.
But it’s from here that Seifalian leads University College London’s (UCL) Department of
Nanotechnology and Regenerative Medicine, which he jokingly calls the ‘human spare parts
store’.
At the cutting edge of modern medicine, Seifalian and his team are focusing on growing
replacement organs and body parts to order using a patient’s own cells. There would be
no more waiting for donors or complex reconstruction – just a quick swap.
And because the organ is made from the patient’s own cells, the risk of rejection should,
in theory, be eliminated.
