Scientists Grow First Functioning Human Lungs

Researchers in Texas grew adult lungs (right) starting with "scaffolding" (left) that's left behind from a set of damaged lungs. Credit: University of Texas Medical Branch. Lungs are a notoriously delicate organ. That makes useable donor lungs hard to come by---in 2010, just 1,800 lung transplants took place in the United States. However, researchers are getting closer to addressing the shortage by growing lungs, for the first time, in the lab.Although these lungs haven't been actually transplanted, the technology could someday help shorten the list of people waiting for donors. Scientists at the University of Texas used damaged lungs from two children who died in car accidents. In a cutting-edge kind of tissue engineering, they stripped away all the cells from the lungs and left behind the “scaffolding,” the intricate web of proteins that holds cells in place. Researchers then coated this scaffold with viable lung cells from a second ...