Nonetheless, both researchers say that the technique used to actually produce the lung was “careful, well planned and beautifully presented”. Cortiella says that it “shows the importance of using the organ’s own extracellular matrix”, while Nichols notes that it “advances our view of what a bioreactor needs to look like in order to both grow and mature lung tissue”.
And Nichols is particularly excited about the fact that other researchers are making significant headway in engineering a lung. “It is hard to make headway in a field when so few people have tried to engineer a lung,” she says. “Good science does not take place in a vacuum. You need a critical mass to move the field along.”
Lung engineering may not be a competitive field, but it’s clear that similar approaches are being tested for other organs. Just last week, another team from Massachussetts General Hospital achieved the same trick for livers, stripping them down to a scaffold, re-growing them, and transplanting them back into rats. Again, we’re a long way off from the clinic but the fact that progress is being made at all makes this a very exciting time to be alive.
Lungs rebuilt in lab and transplanted into rats : Not Exactly Rocket Science
