Bladder

Bladder diseases plague 400 million people in this world, and it appears that the scientists at Harvard Medical School are coming closer to the solution.

They claim to be able to grow a functional dog's bladder from a polymer scaffolding and a set of cells.

It is understood, in the medical world, that the bladder is made of three layers - a muscle layer, a [matrix], followed by an inner lining of [urothelial] cells. It is only recently that a large batch of urothelial cells was grown in a culture, due to their highly-specialized functions and needs.

The researchers were able to use a [biodegradeable] polymer matrix, seed the outer layer with muscle cells, and the interior with urothelial cells, and then incubate it, in order to reproduce a fully-functional bladder. After almost a year, they were inserted into dogs. For more than a year, the bladder showed no signs of rejection, and remains streching and emptying, just like a natural one.

Although the experiment has worked for dogs, it remains to be seen if science could make it a reality for humans.

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