A little more than a year ago, Time Magazine published an article entitled "
Scientists Grow New Body Parts in the Lab". Low and behold, the article was about a team at Wake Forest University's research into creating human urethral tissue which is grown on a tubular "scaffolding", and suitable for transplant into human males with strictures which would otherwise have probably required a partial urostomy, or Johansen's Urethroplasty to achieve urinary drainage.
The research team, led by Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine created the human urethras (trust me, this was no easy process!) and transplanted them into a total of five young men, the most recent, in 2010. The longest-term recipients, all young boys have successfully retained the bioengineered tissue, which functions identically to their own (and seems to have become almost indistinguishable from their own urethral tissue), for a period of time approaching six years. Adult subjects have not taken part in this research, thus far - but I can guarantee that there will be no shortage of volunteers!!
My writing more will not do the subject the justice it deserves, here's a link to **"The Lancet" research paper. It is in .pdf format:
http://www.mediafire.com/?3jdiyp8tlf3op3w
** © The Lancet, 2011, and respective research copyrights,
**© The Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine and Dr. Anthony Atala,
Our thanks to "Dr. Joe", our resident urologist, and an editor for WikiProject- Medicine©, whose work on updating this site, and that of Wikipedia's "reconstructive urology" pages is to be commended,
Many thanks to "Karen", of the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine, who provided this info for all to see, and was instrumental in procuring the document for "Dr. Joe". Should you ever visit central Pennsylvania, I owe you a steak dinner!
PLEASE SUPPORT THIS RESEARCH!!!! IT'S OUR BEST HOPE!!!
Per: Moderator Tim