TED

Anthony Atala on Growing New Organs

"Every 30 seconds, a patient dies from diseases that could be treated with tissue replacement."

Although there are a lot of lives saved each day with the help of replacing organs, there is a huge shortage of them, and it defnitely isn't saving as many lives as it could. Anthony Atala feels that a great way would be to have body parts regenerate organs and tissues that are no longer there or working properly. This idea is used by many animals, such as salamanders. In essence, his main idea is to grow them, instead of having to transplant them. After building it and placing it into an oven with specific degrees and amount of oxygen, they actually exercise the muscles in order to condition it to what it is supposed to do, and then they place it into the patient. Another way to make it is to use a printer that uses cells instead of ink. This is actually in use today; not to be used on patients yet, but is still experiemental.