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Growing Organs / Tissues / Body Parts

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Scientists have grown major parts of rabbits' penises in the laboratory.

The segments were grown from the animals' own cells and they were able to use the reconstructed organs to mate, according to New Scientist magazine.

The next step is to try to recreate the entire organ from scratch, it said.

The technique could make it possible to rebuild the penises of men who have been injured or those of children born with genital abnormalities, the magazine added.

It could also provide an alternative to current methods for enlarging the penis, such as injecting fat cells, it said.

A patient would have penile cells removed by a doctor and, a few weeks later the organ, or parts of it grown using the cells, could be surgically implanted.

After the surgery the rabbits behaved true to type, trying to have sex within 30 seconds of being put in a cage with a female.

"They were able to copulate, penetrate and produce sperm," Anthony Atala, of Harvard Medical School, whose team carried out the work, told the magazine.

The penises generated about half of the normal pressure of an erect penis. "It's analogous to the penis of a 60-year-old man, versus that of a 30-year-old," Mr Atala said.

It may be a while before the technique is tried with human tissue, the magazine said.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_668763.html
 
Dark Detective said:
After the surgery the rabbits behaved true to type, trying to have sex within 30 seconds of being put in a cage with a female.

This is exactly what the world needs. More rabbits.

This is the perfect thread (not meaning to hijack or anything--wait--yes I am) to polish our one-liner skills.

Everyone please submit their best one-liner joke about this thread. As you can see, mine was pretty limp. *giggle*
 
I tried to think of an appropriately off-colour comment to make, but gave up because it got too hard...
 
ok...here i go:

Penis grows in laboratories? That must be one sexy lab*wolf whistle*
 
Monster Penis escapes from Lab; Runs amuck in Regina (Saskatchewan)

No, wait:

Lab-Grown Penises: Scientist Reprimanded for Lying about Size

And inevitably:

Brussels Sets European Standards for Penis Size

Editorial: Yes, Virginia, There is an Easter Bunny

Research Lab Shares Rise on Good Penis News
 
That's nothing, I got one to grow in my bedroom only this morning. :eek:
 
Something stirred as I read this tale.

Yes, it was a strange memory of a picture on Pravda, which I am pleased
to see is still there. And worth mentioning, if anyone missed it last year.

So how's this for one off the wrist? :p

english.pravda.ru/fun/2001/08/10/12267.html
Link is dead. See later post for description of the MIA article.
 
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Oops! Sorry! I thought you were looking for headlines

Misread the original post.

Here are some one-liners:

(Jay Leno Style :) Have you heard? A lab has grown rabbit penises. Makes you wonder what all those scientists do with their spare time.

(David Letterman Style :) Top 10 Good Things about a Lab-Grown Rabbit Penis

1. It keeps on going, and going, and going.

(Conan O'Brien Style :) Scientists claim they can now grow rabbit penises in the laboratory. I guess that Viagra spokesman Senator Robert Dole will soon be out of a job. Too bad they can't grow something useful like a woman that isn't turned off by a giant-headed carrot-topped Irish American freak.
 
Fairly far out stuff but fascinating:

Starfish gene could be key to regenerating lost limbs

13.08.2004
By SIMON COLLINS

Gene engineers are looking to starfish for what could be the answer to the dreams of amputees - a gene that could regenerate lost limbs.

Dr Rick Lathrop, a biomedical computing expert at the University of California, says his team is already creating new genes that will give people more resistance than natural genes to diseases such as genital warts.

The work is still in the laboratory, and has yet to be tried on animals, let alone humans.

But he expects that the new understanding of genes will revolutionise medicine.

"It's going to unlock the basic secrets of life," he said in Auckland, where he is a main speaker at the Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

"The human genome has about 3 billion letters [of genetic code]. All the variation amongst humans is only one-tenth of 1 per cent of the genome. We are 99.9 per cent similar to each other."

On the same basis, we are 98 per cent identical to chimpanzees, 36 per cent the same as a fly and 15 per cent the same as a simple plant called thale cress.

"Starfish can regenerate limbs," Dr Lathrop said. "We are highly similar to starfish [compared to flies or plants]. We will come to understand aging, cancer and the regeneration of limbs."

He said his confidence came from the powerful marriage of the new genetic understanding with modern computers, which could search huge sets of genetic data to spot mutant genes or proteins which may be causing diseases - or unique genes with special benefits such as the ability to remake limbs.

His team sees DNA - the genetic material making up all living things - as being able to be studied and potentially manipulated at the level of individual atoms.

"We are trying to put small pieces together to make something we wanted," he said.

Genetic researchers in the University of California team have built artificial genes from smallpox and from the human papilloma virus which causes the genital warts implicated in ovarian cancer.

"Some of the genes for the human papilloma virus are not naturally occurring genes," Dr Lathrop said.

"They have designed them to be ones that they believe would be more effective as an antigen [something which the body recognises as alien] to induce an immune response."

The team is also working on creating genetic mutations to block a tumour-suppressing protein called P53 when it malfunctions and allows cancer cells to spread.

They have found that 18 per cent of cancers caused by mutations somewhere on the P53 protein can be suppressed by creating another mutation on a different part of the protein.

"This is speculative," Dr Lathrop said. "It's only in the universities that we have the freedom to take on problems that are long-term and very risky."

The project uses software developed at Waikato University, called Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis, or Weka.

Auckland University Professor Garth Cooper said New Zealand researchers hoped to use similar techniques to regenerate brain cells in patients with degenerative conditions such as Huntington's disease.

"There are animals that regenerate limbs, many of them," he said. "Whether we will ever be able to do it I don't know."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3584086&thesection=news&thesubsection=general

I would have thought that the completely different cell structure might stop this from working but he seems confident on a theoretical level so..............
 
Yes but this is exactly the kind of research Doc Conners did with lizards, resulting in him becoming... The Lizard.

So, we could end up with a supervillain called The Starfish, who lies prostrate on the seabed with his stomach hanging out of his mouth and its anus on top of its head. Wouldn't want to be sat behind him in the cinema.
 
Doctor Gateau said:
Wouldn't want to be sat behind him in the cinema.

"Excuse me could you take your hat off?"

"I'm sorry thats my fifth leg!!"

"It'll grow back"

--------------
I'm sure the JLA had to fight some nasty mutant alien starfish at some point so be careful what you wish for!!
 
More on regrowing bits of the body

telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... east01.xml
Link is dead. Here's the text of the MIA webpage, salvaged from the Wayback Machine ...

Breasts may be grown in lab thanks to gene find

A gene that triggers the growth of breasts has been discovered which could one day enable technicians to grow mammary tissue in the lab for cosmetic surgery or for reconstructive surgery after breast cancer.

Initially, the scientists who discovered the gene are going to use it to shed light on the causes of breast cancer and why some people have extra nipples and breasts, which occur in about one person in every 18.

The team from the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre has named it the Scaramanga gene, after the three-nippled villain from the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun.

The gene makes a growth factor that triggers breast and nipple growth and has important implications for breast cancer, as reported in the journal Genes and Development. In the disease it is thought that long-lived stem cells, which replenish cells in the body, start growing uncontrollably.

"By learning more about this gene and the protein it produces, it will allow us to determine how normal breast development is initiated and, importantly, examine how this is connected with breast cancer," said Prof Alan Ashworth, director of the centre, based at The Institute of Cancer Research, London.

Prof Ashworth said: "We already believe that the protein produced by the Scaramanga gene is linked with breast cancer and the next steps are to study this in more detail."

He added that the Scaramanga gene does not influence why some women have larger breasts than others: this depends on the amount of fat in the breast.

SALVAGED FROM THE WAYBACK MACHINE:
https://web.archive.org/web/2006091...main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/01/nbreast01.xml
 
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Grow Your Own Limbs

By Kristen Philipkoski
02:00 AM Sep, 22, 2006

In response to the hundreds of soldiers coming home from war with missing arms or legs, Darpa is spending millions of dollars to help scientists learn how people might one day regenerate their own limbs.

Prosthetics are getting better all the time, but they will never be as good as the limbs we were born with. So two teams of scientists at 10 institutions across the country are competing to regrow the first mammalian limb.

The two groups are sharing $7.6 million in grants for a year to find a way to give humans salamander-like abilities. According to Army Medical Command, 411 soldiers who fought in Iraq and 37 in Afghanistan are amputees as a result of combat wounds. If preliminary research is successful, the scientists could receive more funding for up to four years.

Motor Heads
The New Bionics
The prosthetics of the not-so-distant future are intertwined with muscles, nerves … even neurons. By Rachel Metz.

Interactive Bionics Tour:
See applied prosthetics research in action.
DIY Prosthetics
Amputees who can't find the right prosthetics on the market build their own -- sometimes out of Legos. By Quinn Norton.

Grow Your Own Limbs
Scientists are learning how amputees might eschew the prosthetic and grow back missing limbs. By Kristen Philipkoski. [ You are here ]

I Want My Bionics
What if bionics get so good that we want them even if we don't need them? By Chris Oakes. [ Coming Sep 25 ]

The researchers' first milestone is to generate a blastema -- a mass of cells able to develop into various organs or body parts -- in a mammal.

"We have to show we can do that in a mammal by 24 months -- and by 48 months we have to show that we can actually regrow digits," said Stephen Badylak, director of the Center for Pre-Clinical Tissue Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh's McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and a principal investigator for his team. "This is really a Star Wars-type project."

Mammals can't naturally regenerate limbs or digits beyond the fetal stage. Amphibians like salamanders and newts, however, can regrow limbs, eyes and even spinal cords. So the scientists are on a hunt for the molecular signals responsible for controlling that regenerative ability.

"We're looking for what genes get turned on and off to make one regenerative and one not," Badylak said. "We can regenerate as a fetus. We know the potential is there, but it's a matter of unlocking that potential (in adults)."

Badylak's team is working with a remarkably regenerative mammal -- a mouse discovered by accident in 1998.

Ellen Heber-Katz, a professor at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, was working with mice that had been genetically engineered to develop lupus when she noticed that some of their ears looked weird. She had punched holes in them so she could separate her control from her treatment groups in an experiment. But the holes quickly grew shut without a trace -- not even a hint of a scar.

The missing ear holes confused her research at the time, but the phenomenon launched a whole new career for Katz.

She and her colleagues wanted to find out if other parts of these mice, known as the MRL strain, would also regenerate. So they performed some tests: They snipped off the tip of a tail, severed a spinal cord, injured the optic nerve and damaged various internal organs.

All of the injuries healed, even the severed spinal cord. The results caused Heber-Katz to shift her research from autoimmune disease to regenerative medicine.

Now, thanks to Darpa's call for grant applications in regeneration, scientists all over the country from various disciplines are working together on the MRL mouse.

"It's an interdisciplinary team of people who would never otherwise work together," Badylak said. "That's what Darpa does."

Hans Georg-Simon has been studying salamanders for 15 years. As part of the Darpa project, he's identifying genes that control regeneration in salamanders. If those same genes are active in the MRL mouse, he'll have a lead on which genes in humans might be manipulated to allow regeneration.

At some point during evolution, humans seem to have lost the ability to regenerate, Simon said.

"There are actually more species on this globe that can replace lost structures during regeneration than there are animals who can't," he said. "From a human perspective, we always think we are the masters; we know everything. But no, it is not so. We belong to the species … that have secondarily lost the ability to regrow lost tissues."

Another salamander scientist, Ken Muneoka, a professor at Tulane, is on the competing team. His lab is focusing on a type of cell called fibroblasts. The cells exist throughout the body and produce collagen fibers.

"In salamanders we have pretty good evidence that these cells control spatial information in the body, that is to say where a cell or tissue is located," Muneoka said.

Fibroblasts in mammals invade wounds and create scar tissue. "In mammals (fibroblasts are) not doing what we want them to do," he said. "We want to redirect their activity in response to injury."

And now for the most annoying, but necessary, question a reporter can ask a scientist: When will you get this to work in humans?

"It's impossible to know," Muneoka said. "I could tell you next year or 20 years. It has a lot to do with discovery. We might find out that if we just alter one gene pathway in a mammal … all of a sudden cells (act) like a salamander. That would be spectacular, but I don't think so. I think it's going to require lot of small changes. So it will take a lot of time to discover them."

Simon also believes the discovery process will be a long one, up to 20 years. "But don’t hold me to that," he said. "I would not give you my left arm for that."

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/me ... 817-0.html
 
Here's the text and associated photo from the MIA Pravda item cited by James Whitehead (Post #8).

NOTE: Photo deliberately placed at the bottom of the text to keep it out of view unless / until you click to expand the quoted text.
18:24 2001-08-10
DOCTORS GREW PENIS ON GUY'S ARM
16-year-old guy Malik was ready to make up with the idea he will never be a real man. But the doctors gave the hope back to him.

The guy was deprived of his genitals when peeing. The urine spurt incidentally got on the bald wire. The current rush caused so much damage to the sexual organ that it had to be amputated. The guy's relatives did not want to make up with that fate and started searching for some medical institution that could bring the love handles back. They found it.

The specialists of the department for reconstructive micro-surgery of the Russian clinical hospital for children examined Malik and said the situation could be improved. In the beginning they made a cut on his forearm and stitched an expander in there √ a 12 centimeter empty latex cylinder. A certain amount of physical solution was injected in the expander daily, the skin was expanding and growing taking the shape of a penis. This organ was growing on guy's arm for 10 months! Finally the doctors cut it away from Malik's forearm together with the feeding artery, made an urethra in it and sew it to the place where it should be.

- If they make an artificial limb in a while then our guy will be able to have the normal sex life, - surgeon Sergei Yasonov said.


PENISS.jpg


Salvaged from the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010913023102/http://english.pravda.ru/fun/2001/08/10/12267.html
 
Is this for real or a cock & bull story?

pravda.ru published a lot of piffle! There was one about two girls and a cat . . . :rollingw:

I see it is still up and running!

"When Svetlana returned home from the hospital, she had to tell the story to her husband, Boris. The man could not take the fact that his wife preferred having oral sex with a cat: Boris kicked Svetlana out of the house and the abandoned woman had to stay with her mother."

The cat was named Timka, by the way. He evidently needed to be put in the mood by an adult movie. :cat:
 
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Poor Jessica, in darkest despair
Said 'my hubby was caught in a snare
I will do you a favour
the kind you will savor,
please make a new todger for Rodger the Rabbit'

INT21.
 
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Here's the photo ...

index.php


(You'll find your original 2002 posting of this story here in this merged thread.)
 
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A chap I used to work with had the same thing done to his hand after a car crash in the early 90s. He was in a car that rolled while he had his arm out of the window, so his hand was crushed. It was sewn into a pocket in his groin area to protect it, either before or after it was rebuilt IIRC.
 
Man has new penis 'built'on his arm after losing his to a blood infection. Medicine and surgical techniques are really quite wonderful, offering people like him a sense of normality once again after such devastating circumstances.

newpenis.jpg


Dad who lost his penis to horrific blood infection gets a new one in world first
A dad who lost his penis to a horrific blood infection has become the first man in the world to have a new one built on his arm.

Malcolm MacDonald, 45, was even given an extra two inches by surgeons — but a series of delays mean he has lived with it on his limb for four years.

Malcolm, a mechanic, is desperate for his £50,000 ($A92,000) NHS-funded appendage — which he has nicknamed “Jimmy” — to be finally transferred to where it should be.

But he can still see the funny side of having it dangling from his arm and is in awe of the medics who helped turned his life around.

“Of course it is mad – having a penis on your arm,” he said.
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/h...t/news-story/ccb7c572206245f44bc916d7cbd3a547
 
I had no idea that a perineum could get infected at all, let alone spread it to other body parts.
Hope they fix him up soon.
 
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This 2013 story from China illustrates the growth of a replacement nose on a patient's forehead.
Chinese doctors grow car crash victim a new nose on his forehead

forehead-nose-1.jpg

A 22 year old Fujian man who was left looking like Lord Voldemort after a traffic accident has had a new nose grown on his forehead by doctors at a Fuzhou hospital, Reuters reports.
Using a tissue expander on the man's forehead, doctors "grew" a new nose by cutting the tissue and moulding cartilage taking from his ribs into the right shape. Doctors plan to complete the transplant soon.

According to LiveScience, the operation, though dramatic in appearance, is actually quite routine:
[This] method is not that different from plastic surgery techniques used all the time, said Dr. David Cangello, an attending plastic surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital and Manhattan, Eye Ear and Throat Hospital in New York.

"I would call it a different take on a principles that we commonly use in reconstruction," Cangello said.

The forehead is useful for growing noses on because its tissue is similar to that of the nose. It is also enervated with blood vessels which nourish the tissue before and after it is transplanted. If doctors were to grow the nose on a leg or arm, this would require laborious microsurgery to transplant blood vessels to the nose area.

SALVAGED FROM THE WAYBACK MACHINE:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013093...r_crash_victim_a_new_nose_on_his_forehead.php
 
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