Scientists Tissue-Engineer Part of Human Stomach in Laboratory

Cincinnati: Scientists report in Nature using pluripotent stem cells to generate human stomach tissues in a petri dish that produce acid and digestive enzymes. Publishing their findings online Jan. 4, researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center grew tissues from the stomach’s corpus/fundus region. The study comes two years after the same team generated the stomach’s hormone-producing region (the antrum).

Scientists Develop Tissue-Engineered Model of Human Lung and Trachea

Los Angeles: Scientists at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles have developed a tissue-engineered model of lung and trachea which contains the diverse cell types present in the human respiratory tract.  The study, led by principal investigator Tracy Grikscheit, MD, a pediatric surgeon and scientist at The Saban Research Institute of CHLA, was published this week in the online version of the journal Tissue Engineering. Lung disease causes more than 200,000 deaths annually in the United States. Although the lung is generally considered slow to respond to disease and injury, it does undergo regenerative processes, most of which are not fully understood. Building an understanding of these processes might lead to harnessing these innate mechanisms to help damaged lungs repair.  A first step is a proper three-dimensional model in which the disease process can be studied.