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More peopl e are w ai ti ngfor a ki dneythan any other organ,but i t's one of the hardesl "bi to grow . A transpl antabi e oarti fi ci al " ki dney i s many years aw ay. H ere'sthe slrategy being followed at Wake Forest.

temperatureuntrlthe cells form functioningtissue. The whole process takes six to eight weeks. Solid organs with lots of blood vessels,such as kidneys or livers,are harder to grow than hollow ones like bladders.But Atala'sgroup-which is working on 22 o rga ns an d t is s ues ,inc luding ears-recently made a functioning piece of human ilver.One tool they use is similarto an ink-jet printer; it "prints" different types of cells and the organ scaffold one layer at a time. Other la bs are also ra ci ng t o m ak e bioar t if ic ial organs.A jawbone has sprouted at Columbia University and a lung at Yale.At the University of Minnesota,Doris Taylorhas fabricated a beating rat heart, growing cells from one rat on a scaffold she made from the heart of another by washing off its own cells.And at tr t he Unive rsity f Michig an ,H. Dav id Hum es o has created an artificialkidney from cells seeded onto a synthetic scaffold.The cell-phone-size kidney has passed tests on sheep-it's not yei implantable,but it's weara ble, unlike a dia lysisma c hine,and it does m ore than filte r toxins from blood. lt als o m ak es h ormone s a nd p erfo rmso t her k idney f unc t ions . Growing a copy of a patient'sorgan may not always be possible-for instance,when the o rigrnalis too da mag ed b y c anc er . O ne s olut ion for such patients might be a stem cell bank. Atala'steam has shown that stem cells can be c ollect ed with ou t ha rming hum an em br y os ( and t hus wit ho ut p oliticalco ntr ov er s y ) r om am niot ic f fluid in the womb. The researchershave coaxed t hose cells into be co ming hear t , liv er ,and ot her o r gan cells.A ba nk of 1 00 , 000s iem c ell s am ples , Atala says,would have enough genetic variety to match nearly any patient.Surgeonswould order organs grown as needed instead of waiting for cadaversthat might not be a perfect match. "There are few things as devastatingfor a surgeon as knowing you have to replace the tissue and y ou' re doing so meth ingth at ' s not ideal, "s ay s Atala,a urologic surgeon himself."Wouldn't it be great if they had their own organ?" Great for the patient especially,he means. -Josle G/auslusz

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