Seven children doing well with laboratory-grown organs

Three boys and four girls treated at Children’s Hospital Boston are the first people in the world to receive laboratory-grown organs. The children, aged 4 to 19, received bladders grown from their own cells and have now been followed for an average of almost four years. Their cases are reported in the April 4, 2006 online edition of the journal The Lancet.

“This is one small step in our ability to go forward in replacing damaged tissues and organs,” said Anthony Atala, MD, who began working on the technology in 1990 as director of Tissue Engineering for the Urology Program at Children’s Hospital Boston. Atala now directs the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.