The work behind this is the result of a huge effort, starting 20-30 years ago. Some people had given up on the promise of tissue engineering - one of my mentors suggested just over a year ago to me that the field was a poor choice to start a career in due to too many researchers and not enough progress. Its a very active field of research, and practically every university with a life sciences or bioengineering department will be doing some sort of work on it.
Thanks for posting the journal links.
We're not done yet. Most of the currently feasible organs are relatively simple in geometry and homogenety. More complex organs like the kidneys, liver, and espessially brain are probably exponentially harder to make. I personally think we'll have nanotechnologies and regenerative techniques that will leap-frog lab-grown organs before we are making more complex organs (which will be the desired approach unless, as in these cases, the organ is absent). A major disadvantage of lab-grown organs is they still need major surgery to implant.
I also think we will soon find (if we haven't already) that the limit on human lifetime and quality is from diet and excercise, and that these approaches get much more gains per dollar. We will soon find (if we haven't already) that health is limited by resources, not science. Prevention before intervention.
(PhD student in Bioengineering. I don't work in tissue engineering but most of the people in my office do.)
More complex organs like the kidneys, liver, [...]
Interesting. I was under the impression that the liver was going to be one of the easier ones, due to its own ability to regenerate. That's not to say that it's going to just automatically hook up the bile duct and such...
There is a fair bit of focus on it. I'm not sure if that is because of the ease of building them or the need for it - it is a fairly critical organ and there is a shortage of donors. I believe the challenge is the vascular (blood vessel) network, which is quite developed and important to the liver's function.
A lab-grown liver could be quite advantageous to a donated liver - the lab would use the person's own cells to make the tissue. Rejection becomes less of an issue. Today, liver recipients need to go on immuno-suppressants. It is inconvenient to take dozens of pills a day and these people are more prone to illness.
do even need to create artificial livers? i thought liver transplant was easy thanks to its regeneration. Of course you can't simply do the same thing with vaginas... hence the need for engineered ones
There's still the issue of having to take immune system suppressing drugs, and rejection in general. Its less of an issue for the donor (though it is still major surgery) because the donor's liver will regrow and be back to full function.
But prevention is impossible, metabolic damage would at best be slowed down with the right diet and exercise, and not all that much it seems. At least some of the damage is also quite independent of those factors as well. Repairing our bodies seems like the clearest approach to real longevity, regardless of the specific technique.
(No bioengineering background here though, so what do I know.)
Depends on the goal. If maximizing quality and length of life under constrained resources, prevention is more effective. But, as you mention, prevention does have inherent limits on life span. Biotechnology could allow further, perhaps infinite extension to lifespan.
I'm not sure this is a good goal to have. To paraphrase Jobs in his Stanford Convocation speech, death allows the clearing of old ideas and provides urgency to motivate the living. Further, the infinite-living "you" would no longer really be "you", since all the matter and its organisation would be replaced several times over. (Biologically, this also happens but at a different scale so the organisation is more preserved). Arguably, your own ideas, thoughts, and concept of self remain.
It's perfectly possible to learn to change your ideas and continue to learn and adapt over time well into adulthood. Not everyone does it, but I pursue personal growth and learning, and consequentially change quite a lot from year to year. I would happily commit to change and adaptation in order to live for thousands of years. I don't think I need death to give me urgency. If anything, thinking about my mortality tends to reduce my motivation.
I find the idea that an infinite living "me" would not be "me" very strange. It's like saying that if you keep adding fuel to a fire, once the original fuel has burned away it's no longer the same fire. My mind is a dynamic process, even if it changes state, it's still a continuation of the same process.
Ultimately, the ideas and urgency of ordinary human beings probably won't determine what happens to humanity in the long run. We're on course to develop powerful AI even with the technology and ideas we already have. Who knows what will happen then, but I think a stagnated immortal human race is a very unlikely outcome.
Thanks for posting the journal links.
We're not done yet. Most of the currently feasible organs are relatively simple in geometry and homogenety. More complex organs like the kidneys, liver, and espessially brain are probably exponentially harder to make. I personally think we'll have nanotechnologies and regenerative techniques that will leap-frog lab-grown organs before we are making more complex organs (which will be the desired approach unless, as in these cases, the organ is absent). A major disadvantage of lab-grown organs is they still need major surgery to implant.
I also think we will soon find (if we haven't already) that the limit on human lifetime and quality is from diet and excercise, and that these approaches get much more gains per dollar. We will soon find (if we haven't already) that health is limited by resources, not science. Prevention before intervention.
(PhD student in Bioengineering. I don't work in tissue engineering but most of the people in my office do.)