This is interesting stuff but I don't think the article describes anything groundbreaking. The cells used by the scientists in the article are called adipose-derived stem cells and their applications are already well known in the regenerative medicine industry. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3668445
The biologists I develop software with have been talking about adipose-derived stem cells for over a year, so I was hoping the article was going to announce a technological leap in organ manufacturing. It did not.
Isn't the story eerily similar to the Macchiarini scandal at Karolinska from a few years ago? https://forbetterscience.com/2016/04/26/the-stem-cell-faith-... He also thought he could use adipose stem cells for implants but it didn't work and patients died. E.g if the new method causes implants not to be rejected that would indeed be a breakthrough, but many have tried and failed so one should be extremely skeptical about these claims.
The innovation is personalized hydrogels built to avoid rejection, not the induced pluripotent stem cells which were re-differentiated into things. The key was the structural materials which hold those cells.
That makes sense but is hydrogel rejection really a thing? I thought hydrogels were already safe from rejection because they don’t contain anything the immune system sees as a threat. Same goes for collagen, no?
The biologists I develop software with have been talking about adipose-derived stem cells for over a year, so I was hoping the article was going to announce a technological leap in organ manufacturing. It did not.