Judy Beaumont’s changes of heart may be frequent, but don’t call her fickle, the Arizona Republic reports. The 56-year-old Arizona resident surrendered her badly damaged human heart on Aug. 22 to Mayo Clinic surgeons, who replaced it with a total artificial heart — making her the first patient in the Southwest to receive the device. [Sign in to read the full article...]
Stem cell scientists in Germany are accusing a clinical researcher of making unscientific claims about an adult stem cell transplant therapy as the country’s parliament prepares to debate liberalizing the current stem cell law, The Scientist reports. Dr. Bodo-Eckehard Strauer, director of cardiology at the University of Düsseldorf, told the daily Rheinische Post Sept. 15 [Sign in to read the full article...]
Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York announced they have successfully reprogrammed adult stem cells from the testes of male mice into a wide variety of cell types, including functional blood vessels, contractile cardiac tissue, and brain cells, according to a report from HealthDay News. The scientists note if the same can be [Sign in to read the full article...]
Physicians and researchers across the country are miniaturizing and refining heart-lung machine technology to create a new generation of artificial lungs, the Los Angeles Times reports. Developers of the devices want to make them “small enough and convenient enough so a patient can walk around and be happy at home,” Dr. Bartley P. Griffith, chief [Sign in to read the full article...]
Massachusetts General Hospital transplant surgeon Dr. Joseph Vacanti has spent more than 20 years working toward an artificial liver, experimenting with various types of support structures that might allow specialized cells such as hepatocytes (liver cells) to grow and function outside an actual organ. Now, the firm commercializing his technology, BioEngine, may be within striking [Sign in to read the full article...]