Sex organ research proves rabbit forming
November 10, 2009
REUTERS NEWS AGENCY
WASHINGTON–Researchers have engineered artificial penises in rabbits, using cells from the animals, who then used their new organs to father baby rabbits.
The work takes scientists closer to making other complex solid organs such as livers using a patient's own cells, the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday.
It provides a tailor-made transplant, said Dr. Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine, who led the study. "Once the tissue is there, the body recognizes the tissue as its own," Atala said in a telephone interview from North Carolina.
Atala's team first created a scaffold using the penis of a rabbit, and removed all the living cells from it, leaving only cartilage. They then took a small piece of tissue from the penis of another rabbit and grew the cells in a lab dish.
The cells were seeded onto the scaffold, and six weeks later the researchers had penises to graft onto rabbits that had their penises removed.
The animals seemed to realize they had working organs again – the 12 with the grafts tried to mate with female rabbits within one minute of being put into cages with them, and four of the female rabbits became pregnant. Those with the scaffolding alone and no working tissue did not even try.
Atala hopes the approach will work with other organs. "We have made clitoral tissue in the past," he said.
"We have extensive work going on with kidneys and livers."
Toronto Star
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