Research funded here for artificial intestine
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As a pediatric surgeon and scientist, David Hackam has had to deal with the suffering and often the deaths of children with short bowel syndrome, a condition in which the body is unable to absorb food after a significant loss of functioning intestine.
Dr. Hackam, of Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, has been frustrated by the fact most SBS patients require transplants to live but significantly widespread treatment is deterred by a lack of donors and complications from immunosuppressive therapy.
That's why Dr. Hackam hopes to develop an artificial intestine that would not only benefit SBS patients but adults with intestinal problems. He said he hoped the process could be used to replace other failing organs.
And now, with the receipt of $543,571 of direct funding for three years of research from the Hartwell Foundation, Dr. Hackam and his collaborator, John March, associate professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell University, hope to make their dream a reality.
"If this works, it is going to be amazing," Dr. Hackam said. "Artificial organs are kind of the Holy Grail. It works in science fiction, and now we hope to do it in real life.
"For families who have a child with this, their whole world is turned upside down. They are so excited to have a child and then they learn their child has this and ... their lives go from incredible joy to incredible sadness to incredible uncertainty, often within hours.
"To be able to offer them something to get them back on track is incredibly humbling and that is what we hope to do."
Their research involves producing a synthetic three-dimensional bioscaffold upon which to grow cultured intestinal stem cells from the patient. Mr. March, who holds a doctorate in chemical engineering, has overseen the production of the bioscaffold; over the past three years Dr. Hackam has worked on optimizing the growth of stem cells.
Now with the Hartwell Foundation funding, the researchers can work to optimize the growth of intestinal stem cells in the three-dimensional "gut tube" reactor, or artificial intestine. The next step will be to implant the tube into mice with surgically created SBS and to coat the intestine with a nutritional formula to test if the host can absorb nutrients through the artificial intestine.
First Published November 29, 2011 12:00 am
