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> Hufford says there’s reason to think that the organs won’t grow indefinitely in the lymph nodes. The mini organs rely on chemical distress signals from the fa
by a1o 3y ago
> Hufford says there’s reason to think that the organs won’t grow indefinitely in the lymph nodes. The mini organs rely on chemical distress signals from the failing liver to grow; once the new organs have stabilized blood filtering, they will stop growing because that distress signal disappears, he says. But it’s not yet clear precisely how large the mini-livers will become in humans, he adds.
Well that looks promising, hopefully they stay as mini-livers.
- smeej 3y agoI immediately imagined people with much larger liver masses in their necks and got to wondering how safe it would be. Is there risk of impingement on things like arteries or the spine were they to continue to grow? What's the margin of safety between how big they're expected to get and how big would be dangerous? (I know nearly nothing about any of the systems involved, so I won't be surprised if these end up being comically naïve questions. I just still wonder!)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- engineer_22 3y agoThey are using lymph nodes in the abdomen. Worth-while to consider your questions though.
- smeej 3y agoOh you're right. I misread the part about a tube in the throat and thought they were ending up in the neck. Though, with lymph nodes as connected as they are, why do the liver cells stay where they're planted, so to speak?
- tialaramex 3y agoAlmost all human cells are programmed to remain in a specific place and to commit suicide if they discover they're misplaced. This way when things go a little bit wrong and a few cells are somewhere they shouldn't they just die, and there are more where those came from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoikis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoikis The lymph system's own cells deliberately lack this programming, they're part of the immune system and are supposed to wander about on their own. But these liver cells presumably don't think they're actually lymph cells, so they aren't entitled to just wander off.
- exe34 3y agoIt's pretty amazing, a decentralized liver. I wonder how many other organs could be decentralized like this for backup.
- harvie 3y agoAre we talking brain here?
- exe34 3y agoI was thinking mini-kidneys, mini-hearts? The latter might involve difficult coordination, but maybe that's not necessary if you've got individual hearts running at lower blood pressure. It all just reminds me of Neal Asher's stories, where creatures build nano factories in their bodies as and when needed, including local fusion "nodes".
- inglor_cz 3y agoThe people who are running this trial have similar plans with mini-kidneys and mini-pancreases, yes. It is mentioned at the end of the article. Personally, I would like to see mini-brains. "This idea comes from my ass" could become literally true.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoHeart would be great because it's such a single point of failure. Brain would be nice for similar reasons, but also...a little more existentially challenging.
- exe34 3y agoI think there's a lot of parts in the brain that involve day to day coordinations that could be moved out. Fine motor control stuff in the cerebellum probably wouldn't hurt if it's closer to the muscles, but the cerebrum might be harder to split up and scatter because of latency and bandwidth. On the other hand, we could go from dual core in the cranium to multicore distributed - like octop(uses|i) have one brain per arm and I believe another to rule them all.