“This is a nose we’re growing for a patient next month. It’s a world first. Nobody has ever grown a nose before,” Prof. Seifalian said, the London Daily Mail reported.  The scientific team explained that when the nose is transferred to the patient, it won’t go directly on the face but will instead be placed inside a balloon inserted beneath the skin on their arm.  After four weeks, during which time skin and blood vessels can grow, the nose will be monitored, then transplanted in the face.

“Other groups have tried to tackle nose replacement with implants but we’ve found they don’t  last,” said Adelola Oseni, a member of the research team.  They migrate, the shape of the nose changes. But ours will hold itself completely, as it’s an entire nose shape made out of polymer.”

“We are the first in the world working on this. We can make a meter every 20 seconds if we need to. However, the full success of these implants needs to be tested with a larger number of patients,” Siefalian said.

For more information go to: http://www.siasat.com/english/news/british-scientistsi-growing-human-spare-parts-laboratory

Christie, who was born at Newark Beth Israel, signed the bill in an auditorium packed with hospital employees, former patients who had been transplanted at the medical center, and the relatives of individuals whose organs were donated to others.  “Being an organ donor is one of the most profound gifts to give someone else — a chance at a new, healthy life,” Christie told the audience.

Raymond Martinez, chief administrator of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission (MCV), said he had just finished touring all the state motor vehicle offices to emphasize the importance of the staff to educate the public about becoming a donor.  “That is part of their routine–to ask as of our customers to register,” Martinez said.  Since 2006, when motor vehicle offices began working closely with the New Jersey Sharing Network and Gift of Life, MVC has added 2.5 million people to the donor registry.

New Jersey still ranks 41st nationwide for organ donor participation, said Dr. Mark Zucker, head of the heart transplant program at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center.  “We need to actively educate teenagers, parents and employees on a repeated basis,” Zucker said.

For more information go to: http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/12/0423/2237

“While most of us have heard about the safety problems of metal-on-metal hips in the news, these devices are just one illustration of a much larger failure in our regulatory system,” said Nancy Metcalf,  Consumer Reports senior program editor.  The magazine noted that a recent survey they conducted found nearly one in five (17%) American adults has an implanted medical device.

The investigation details the risks associated with four common devices: surgical mesh, Lap-Bands, metal hips, and cardiac devices.  The findings of the two of devices of most interest  transplant field include:

• (a) Surgical Mesh: No testing – “Tens of thousands of women have been have been implanted with transvaginal mesh for prolapse repair and bladder support.  Despite thousands of reports of adverse events, repeated alarms by women’s health and consumer-health advocates, and multiple lawsuits, these products are still being sold and still classified as “moderate risk” devices.
• (b) Cardiac Devices: Significant problems – Implantable cadioverter-defibrillators are just one of three types of cardiac devices described by the investigation that have had significant problems.  Since 2009, the FDA has received reports of close to 29,000 deaths or injuries from the devices, by far the most for any device type, according to an analysis of a federal data base.

For more information go to: http://www.news-medical.net/news/20120329/Many-medical-implants-never-tested-for-safety.aspx

According to The News, Dr. Dar met his  goal of performing the first living donor transplant in Pakistan within 3 years of his joining SIH.  “Since the patient’s blood group did not match with that of any of his first degree relatives, we had to seek the approval of the Human Organ Tissue Transplant Authority to enable the living donor transplant,” Dr. Faisal told the media at a press conference.  Yasin’s donor was a first cousin of the patient and a 23-year-old university student.

“The ground had been readied by Dr. Najmul-Hassan Share, the Director of Liver Transplantation, who had given SIH a three-year program, but a lot of work remained to be done in order to build services to a level where I would feel confident and comfortable enough to have my own child’s liver transplanted Pakistan, should the need ever arise.  Today we have attained that level,” Dr. Faisal predicted.

The Chief Executive Officer of SIH Dr. Manzoor H. Qazi observed efforts will now be made to train other hospitals in the public and private sectors so that liver transplant surgeries can safely and successfully be performed on a larger scale in a country where thousands of people require liver transplants.  “We will establish  the program along international standards. This may be just the first step of the ladder, but it is an achievement for the whole of Pakistan. We can develop systems, we can work as a team, and we can deliver,” Dr. Qazi said.

For more information go to: http://www.thenews.com/pk/PrintEdition.aspx?ID=106216&Cat=6&dt-5/3/2012

The technique, which involves replacing the immune system with stem cells engineered with a triple combination of HIV-resisting genes, proved capable of replicating a normally functioning human immune system by protecting and expanding HIV-resistant immune cells.  The cells thrived and self-renewed even when challenged with an HIV viral load.

To establish immunity in mice whose immune systems paralleled those of patients with HIV, Anderson and his team genetically modified human blood stem cells, which are responsible for producing the various types of immune cells in the body.  The results were considered successful on all accounts.

“We envision this as a potential functional cure for patients infected with HIV, giving them the ability to maintain a normal immune system through genetic resistance,” said Joseph Anderson, MD, lead author and assistant adjunct professor of internal medicine and a stem cell researcher at the UC Davis Institute for Regenerative Cures.  “Ideally, it would be a one-time treatment through which stem cells express HIV-resistant genes, which in term generate an entire HIV-resistant immune system. After we challenged transplanted mice with live HIV, we demonstrated that the cells with HIV-resistant genes were protected from infection and survived in the face of a viral challenge, maintaining normal human CD4 levels.”

For more information go to: http://www.scienceddaily.com/releases/2012/05/120502092042.htm

The first recipient, Ray Fearing, a 27-year-old Illinois resident received the donated kidney from his sister, Cera, after a long battle with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), a disease in which scar tissue develops on part of the kidney that filters the waste out of the blood, which would ultimately have caused the kidney to fail.  When signs of his illness reoccurred just days after he received the kidney and life-threatening symptoms began to occur, his physicians informed Fearing they had no choice but to remove the failing organ.

They also informed him that he could potentially save someone’s life by allowing doctors to transplant the organ in another patient in need of a kidney transplant, something that had never been done before.

“In over 50% of the cases, transplant does not stop the process of FSGS.  When post surgery tests indicated Ray was at risk for developing life-threatening conditions due to the reoccurrence of the disease, we had to remove  the kidney before he deteriorated. The kidney however was still a relatively healthy, viable organ that could be transplanted into someone else without FSGS,” explained Lorenzo Gallon, MD, medical director of the kidney transplant program at Northwestern Memorial hospital.

Northwestern Medicine experts and member of the hospital’s medical ethics committee reviewed the ultimate procedure  and evaluated the decision prior to re-implanting the organ, including the possibility the kidney would fail to recover from its current level of minor damage due to its exposure to FSGS while implanted in Fearing and fail the to function properly in the new recipient.   The organ regained function almost immediately after re-transplantation and eight days later tests revealed the damage caused by FSGS had been reversed.

For more information go to: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/kidney-transplanted-twice-in-two-weeks-2012-04-24

“Organ transplants have been particularly scrutinized given that these procedures are often performed after-hours due to the timing of or organ availability,” explained senior author of the study Dr. A. Sidney Barritt IV with the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.  “Our study advances evidence by exploring whether time of day of the liver transplant effects patient outcomes.”

The research team used the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) database to identify 94,768 adult liver transplants reported to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) between 1987 and 2010.  Transplants that took place after 7 p.m. and before 7 a.m. were defined as nighttime operations.  Transplants that took place between 5 p.m. on Friday and 8 a.m. on Monday were considered weekend operations.

Results from the retrospective study showed patient survival at 30, 90 and 365 days for nighttime operations was 96%, 93%, and 86%; weekend transplant rates were 95%, 92% and 86%, respectively.  Researchers found that patient survival rates for after hours and weekend transplants were similar to daytime and weekday operations.

“Our findings confirm that patients undergoing liver transplants after hours or on weekends benefit from similar survival outcomes as those have procedures during a standard workday,” said Dr. Barritt.

For more information go to: http://medicalxpress.com/print254656905.html.

“This is a significant finding with many therapeutic implications,” said Victor Dzau, MD, a senior author of the study and James B. Duke professor of medicine and chancellor of health affairs at Duke University.  “If you can do this in the heart, you can do it in the brain, the kidneys and other tissues.  This is a whole new way of regenerating tissue.”

To initiate the regeneration, Dzau’s team used microRNAs, which are molecules that serve as master regulators controlling the activity of multiple genes.  Once deployed, the microRNAs reprogrammed the fibroblasts to become cells resembling the cardiomyocytes that make up heart muscle. The Duke team not only proved the concept in the laboratory, but also demonstrated that the cell conversion could occur inside the body of a mouse–a major requirement for regenerative medicine to become a potential therapy.

“We have proven the concept,” Dzau said. “This is the very early stage, and we have only shown that it is doable in an animal model. Although that’s a very big step, we’re not there yet for humans.”

For more information go to: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-04/dumc-dtt042412.php

The FDA proposed the “Innovation Pathway, a priority review process form “new, breakthrough medical devices” in February 2011.  Innovation Pathway can cut the review process to 150 days, half the previous time, to conduct the most stringent review process for higher-risk devices, the agency said in a press release.

Device manufacturers in the program will be assigned a case manager who will shepherd them through the development process and bring in outside advisers to help manage scientific and regulatory hurdles, said Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Devices (CDRD).

The medical device industry was reported to have agreed in February to a doubling of the fees they pay the FDA to get products reviewed over the next five years to $595 million.

For more information go to: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2012-04-09/end-stage-kidney-devices-to-get-fast-track-FDA-reviews

The hospital reported it has revamped its entire heart treatment program and it is now ranked among the best by US News and World Report.  William Reed, chairman of the hospital’s department of cardiovascular diseases, said adding heart transplants to the program again is “a natural progression to a full-service network.”  He and his wife have donated $1.5 million to the hospital to develop the heart transplant program.  “We follow the patient here, then, at the most critical time of their care, it becomes necessary to send them somewhere else.  We see this as a service we should be providing,” Reed added.

St. Luke’s reaction to the KU announcement was muted.  About half the heart transplant candidates the area currently go to St. Lukc’s Hospital, Reed estimated.  The St. Luke’s transplant program, which opened in 1985, is among the 10 largest in the US. Last year, the hospital performed 36 heart transplants.

The demand for heart transplants is growing, hospital officials said.  In 2009, 18 Kansas residents received new hearts.  The number of adults in the state with congestive heart failure is reported to by about 60,000.

For more information go to: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/04/23/v-print/3571383/ku-hospital-planning-to-renew.html