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A shortage of donor organs costs 130 lives a year, in the Netherlands alone. Start-up Renewal Bio will soon have the solution, even if it is controversial.
Huge drama due to the shortage of donor organs
There is a desperate shortage of donor organs. And have we finally managed to find a suitable donor? So the patient has to take heavy medications to prevent the organ from being rejected. If we find a solution for this, it means we will have more than 130 lives per year, only in the Netherlands. And finally, help for the 1,300 seriously ill on the waiting list, who now often die before they can be helped.
The solution: donor organs in culture
The ideal solution would be if an organ could be implanted with exactly the same DNA as the patients. This could simultaneously remedy the shortage of donor organs and rejection reactions. The best way to grow such organs is from a patient’s stem cells. And then let it grow into a new organ.
The good news is that there is now a start-up that has managed to make this happen. At least: in mice. Although mice are much smaller than us, they are biologically quite similar to us. They are also mammals.
Raising a baby from a skin cell, in a bottle
Renewal Bio takes a “naive” stem cell (a cell that can transform into anything. Scientists have been able to transform the skin cells of adult humans and, of course, mice into these naive stem cells) from a mouse. adult some time ago and let it develop into a so-called gastrula. This is the beginning of a fish-like shape and therefore of a body with a clear shape.
Each cell in this gastrula later becomes a specific place in the body, so you can grow donor organs here as you wish. For example, a heart, kidney or lung. Now the researchers have managed to grow these clumps of cells into healthy embryos that look exactly like natural embryos. The beginnings of organs were also formed, just like in natural embryos. A beating heart, blood vessels through which blood flowed, the beginning of a fold-shaped brain.
An ethical question: can we cultivate embryos for donor organs?
As long as the experiments with mice take place, “obviously” there are no problems. But what if we start working with human stem cells? In effect, we raise babies from a skin cell in a bottle. Can we kill one life to save another? Is it possible to grow a human embryo without a brain? What if a practical hobbyist developed a DIY kit so you could clone the best football player in the world into your shed for your team? A complicated dilemma.
Specialized article: Post-gastrulation synthetic embryos generated ex uterus from Naive Mouse ESCs, Cell, 2022
