"It's like baking a layer cake, but doing it one layer at a time, " said Atala.
Dr. Anthony Atala at Wake Forest University generated bladders and a urethra using scaffolds and patients' stem cells.
Atala and colleagues reported similar success in seven spina bifida patients to replace their dysfunctional bladders in 2006.
"There is a huge population with small vessel disease where the vessels keep collapsing and occluding, " said Atala.
"There is a huge Italian community in the south of the city, so you can find excellent pizzas, " Mr. Atala says.
"An interesting challenge with a lot of these technologies and with regenerative medicine is you have to go slow, " said Atala.
"During the surgery, we go to the area that has been damaged, clean out scar tissue and plug in a new, engineered urethra, " said Atala.
The seeded structure is placed in an incubator for about two weeks, in a "cooking" process that Atala says simulates how cell growth occurs inside the body.
Atala concedes that it will be several years before engineering organs becomes the norm, and that it is not yet clear whether this same technology will work in adults.
Scientists like Atala say regenerative medicine represents a new frontier in medicine that could see doctors curing, rather than merely treating, diseases using the body's natural ability to heal itself.
Wednesday's report is "a nice advancement, " said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, who wasn't involved in the new research.
"Unfortunately for the narrow structures in the body (like urethras), they are kind of complex because they tend to collapse, " said Atala, who added that conventional urethra replacement fails more than half the time.
"We were able to create patients' own tissue that actually belongs there, " said Dr. Anthony Atala, lead author of the study and director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
When it is damaged -- sometimes congenitally, or as result of disease, pelvic fractures or other traumas -- it is usually replaced using tissue harvested from the lining of a patient's cheeks or using skin grafted from another area of the body, according to Atala.
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