I'm donating a kidney to a stranger at the end of September. People seem to think that it's crazy, but I tell them that if I ever need a kidney then they'll likely just be able to grow me a new one by that point.
I've been following this stuff lightly for a few years and if you look at the pace of technological progression, especially when it comes to things like mapping the human genome, it's easy to think that in 50 years the face of medicine will have undergone tremendous change.
Good for you! My Dad did the same (donated kidney to a stranger) about 5 years ago, and still feels very happy with the decision.
It was hard for me, because there's a non-zero chance that I'm going to lose a couple of years with my Dad because of this. I'm glad he did it though, because someone else's Dad might get to live because of it.
I assume you're undergoing counseling before the operation. If you decide you don't want to go through with it that's totally fine - the fact that you're considering it at all is amazing.
There are people trying to pick up the pace for complex organs. Fifty years is way too long. See the New Organ initiative, for example. Lots going on there behind the scenes:
Recent progress with the thymus is an unexpected gift. It is expected that achieving the same with other organs is going to be pretty challenging, lacking such a short cut. Hence the need to speed things up: advocacy and alliances and research prizes.
Off topic, but what made you want to donate a kidney to a stranger? On the surface this seems incredibly altruistic. It's significantly more committed than what many people do and give away a portion of their income. I hope this is not too personal but I'm just curious as to what thinking/events motivated you to do this and how you went about organizing?
I never knew it was possible to donate a kidney to a stranger. Was reading an article about someone who couldn't find a donor and a commenter mentioned that this was a thing. I signed up immediately.
I'm healthy, I only need one, and like I said, I figure by the time I actually need one we'll be able to grow one -- but I suspect it won't actually come to that.
In that light, it doesn't seem all that altruistic.
If some people reading this would like to make a positive contribution, but donating an entire kidney is a little too much for them, I highly encourage you to sign up for the bone marrow donor registry: http://bethematch.org/
There is also a paper from some months back that is open access, and thus provides much more information for those who like to get at the source. This covers earlier work in which they manipulate cell signaling to regrow an existing thymus in situ and restore it to youthful activity:
This is good news for work on immune system rejuvenation, some of which is very focused on restoring the thymus to youthful activity. Immunosenescence is an important contribution to the frailty of aging. One of the issues with an aged immune system is that for various reasons it runs out of competent immune cells to tackle new threats. Means of restoring that population of cells include (a) a more active thymus, (b) clearing out dead wood memory T cells that are hanging around being useless, as that will spur the creation of naive T cell replacements, and (c) plain old cell therapies along the lines of culturing vast numbers of immune cells and infusing them on a regular basis.
A lot of this is very close to practical in the technology demonstration sense today, but of course regulation is the big roadblock in most of the world. It'll take a decade to get this through the very hostile-to-anything-new regulatory system, and of course treatments will only be ever be approved for very sick and damaged people. The existing regulatory system will never approve a thymus rejuvenation procedure for someone who is "only" old and immunosenescent, because that is not defined as a disease - that is a healthy person who is merely old, and shouldn't be treated at all in the eyes of the regulator. That must change, but the pressure for that will largely come from medical tourism if the course of recent history vis a vis first generation stem cell treatments is anything to go by.
Some years ago, transplantation of a thymus was shown to have benefits in mice along these lines, restoring a supply of immune cells, and that was good enough to attract more interest. Regrowing the existing atrophied thymus or putting a new one in place has thus been on the agenda for a while, e.g. in an ongoing SENS Research Foundation / Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine collaboration. That is a more traditional tissue engineering approach, with nanoscale scaffolds, a lot of work on cell differentiation strategies, and so forth. The ability to rejuvenate or regrow the thymus entirely from just a small population of cells, or a few altered protein levels, has come out of left field as something of a pleasant surprise.
This is awesome and great for the future of humanity, but I was honestly totally fascinated by the link[1] in the article referring to the partial growth of human brains from 2013.
I don't know how I missed that when it happened last year, but I'm glad TFA linked to it.
Reading your post, I realize that I don't know what you mean, but the first thing that came to my mind it's that it's possible to bioengineer a new organ, a virus filter (or blocker) that it's atatched to a vein.
It's anybody working at this? Sinthetic new function organs, blocking new virus, or toxic molecules (plastics, pesticides, etc..) that can be grown outside the body and implanted to work as a natural organ. Residues could be excreted in an encapsulated way through the intestine.
I'm no expert, but I assumed that HIV meds damage the kidneys, making treatment a balancing act of too aggressive treatment killing the kidneys vs not addressive enough allowing the virus to do its damage.
Being able to grow a replacement kidney would allow more aggressive treatments. I think this would be true of many diseases, though, not just HIV.
I know my mother-in-law has to live with the knowledge that the meds she takes to manage her bipolar disorder may eventually be what kills her, due to kidney disease.
EDIT: I said kidney because the first couple comments referenced kidneys. Could apply to other organs. The basic idea is that meds often damage organs as a side effect, so being able to replace the organ opens up more possibilities for aggressive treatments.
I've been following this stuff lightly for a few years and if you look at the pace of technological progression, especially when it comes to things like mapping the human genome, it's easy to think that in 50 years the face of medicine will have undergone tremendous change.