Tag: organ transplants

  • Health

    Pig organs for human patients: A challenge fit for CRISPR

    To help develop safe and effective cells, tissues, and organs for medical transplant into human patients, Harvard’s Office of Technology Development has granted a technology license to the Cambridge biotech startup eGenesis.

    4–6 minutes
  • Health

    On the cusp of new transplant era

    With the advent of new techniques and anti-rejection drugs, organ transplantation stands on the threshold of a new era, where once-radical surgeries such as face transplants will seem routine, says Bohdan Pomahac, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital surgeon and Harvard Medical School professor who led recent face transplant surgeries.

    3–5 minutes
  • Health

    AML patients benefit from stem cell transplants

    A stem cell transplant (SCT) from a compatible donor early in the course of disease is the best approach for the majority of young and middle-aged adult patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), according to a new analysis of two dozen clinical studies. The findings of the research, published in the June 10 issue of…

    2–4 minutes
  • Health

    Harvard surgeons perform second partial face transplant in U.S.

    Surgeons at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital toiled for 17 hours in twin operating rooms yesterday performing the second facial transplant surgery operation in the U.S. The complex, challenging operation, conducted on a patient who wishes to remain anonymous, involved replacing the entire mid-face area, including the skin, the muscles and nerves that allow it…

    3–5 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    The ethics of the organ bazaar

    In nearly every country in the world, there is a shortage of kidneys for transplantation. In the United States, around 73,000 people are on waiting lists to receive a kidney. Yet 4,000 die every year before the lifesaving organ is available. Worldwide, about 66,000 kidney transplants are performed annually. By far, that’s too slow a…

    6–8 minutes
  • Health

    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…

    1–2 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    HMS examines ethics of Internet organ donation

    Desperation and frustration are prompting some patients with failing organs to turn to modern technology and the Internet to bypass lengthy organ donation waiting lists and find donors themselves. The practice, which has resulted in several transplants already through a locally run Web site, has sparked a discussion over its ethics, a topic debated Thursday…

    1–2 minutes
  • Health

    Improved procurement could more than double organ availability

    Although millions of people across the country are registered organ donors, only 2 percent of them annually suffer brain death and meet the other medical requirements for being a cadaveric donor. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suggests that the number of actual donors may be further limited by organ procurement organizations that…

    1–2 minutes