The LIFE Initiative: Creating Transplant Organs Through Tissue Engineering
Abstract
The LIFE Initiative: Creating Transplant Organs Through Tissue Engineering MICHAEL V. SEFTON INTRODUCTION W of persons on waiting lists for organ transplantation in North America alone, growing interest is being expressed in using the principles of tissue engineering and regeneration to address the worldwide shortage of donor organs. The goal of this initiative is to produce an unlimited supply of human organs for transplantation, so that replacement organs would be available directly from a storage facility. With such a system, donor tissue would be carefully typed, and organs, like many man-made medical devices, could be made available in a wide range of tissue types and sizes. With this, the limiting factor in organ transplantation would cease to be organ availability through the death of a suitable donor, as is now the situation, and would instead become the time and scheduling of the surgery needed for transplantation. Tissue engineering is the most direct way to create such an organ-bank system. Thus, heart tissue could be used to grow a heart, and the tissue of other organs, such as the liver, could likewise be used to generate those organs. In the case of a heart, one way in which this