Growing muscle, outside the body!

[Dood]

http://www.news-medical.net/?id=11125

"A multinational team of researchers has grown new muscle complete with its own network of blood vessels in the laboratory, and implanted the new muscle in a living mouse."

"In the near future, Levenberg explains, a simple muscle biopsy might provide the "seed" cells for a person's own engineered replacement muscle."

Implantable muscle, a double bicep pose, on one arm!!

It's the only way Coleman could get any bigger

 

[imported_dkm1987]

Quote[/b] (Dood @ July 06 2005,8:13)]Implantable muscle, a double bicep pose, on one arm!!  

It's the only way Coleman could get any bigger  

 

[BoSox]

soon, we will actually be putting on muscle overnight.

 

[OneMoreRep]

in our lifetime?

 

[Old and Grey]

With all these studies going on, the GD mice are going to take over the world!

 

[BoSox]

Quote[/b] (OneMoreRep @ July 06 2005,6:34)]in our lifetime?

I'd say it's possible, although it's doubtful that it will reach a cosmetic point in our lifetimes, it's just not much of a priority. More of repairing muscle in muscle-wasting patients I'd assume and even that is probably a long ways off.

 

[NWlifter]

this is really cool! I hope they can reallly perfect this. Imagine shark attack victims, or car wreck survivors who have had muscles completely ruined or lost.

What I'd like to know, is if right now, we cannot re-attach the spinal nerve on individuals who are paralyzed, how can they hook up the nerves to an implanted muscle so that it 'works'. ?

 

[BoSox]

Did they say anything about the functionality of the muscle? I wish the article was longer because it wasn't clear to me exactly what the results were. I understand that once it was put in, it became increasingly capillarized and whatnot, but could it be activated normally?

 

[Dood]

I actually first read of this in Science News magazine, but couldn't link to it online. From that article:
"Levenberg notes that her team's current experiments tested only whether the engineered muscle could stay alive in the receiving animal. The group is planning future studies to see whether the lab-made muscle can contract as natural tissue does."

Give it some time, they'll probably get it worked out.

 

[imported_edziu]

Quote[/b] (NWlifter @ July 07 2005,1:32)]this is really cool! I hope they can reallly perfect this. Imagine shark attack victims, or car wreck survivors who have had muscles completely ruined or lost.
What I'd like to know, is if right now, we cannot re-attach the spinal nerve on individuals who are paralyzed, how can they hook up the nerves to an implanted muscle so that it 'works'. ?

We can't re-attach a spinal nerve, but servered nerves can be re-connected. They're getting better at getting very good function after reconnecting nerves. My wife had some nerves in her left wrist severed (put her hand through a plate glass window when pushing a door open); the nerves were reconnected, and she only has 10% loss of function in two fingers.