Spare parts for humans: tissue engineers develop lab-grown lungs and limbs

Xeni Jardin 1:55 pm Mon Jan 2, 2012

Above, a PBS NewsHour report by science correspondent Miles O'Brien which I helped shoot, on the subject of tissue engineering. The goal in this field: Grow tissue or even whole organs to repair damaged or diseased human bodies.

The report focuses in part on Isaias Hernandez, a 26-year old Marine whose leg was badly injured in an artillery attack on his convoy, in Iraq. "It looked like a chicken, like if you would take a bite out of it down to the bone," he tells Miles.

Dr. Steve Badylak of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh harvested material from a pig bladder to grow replacement muscle in the young Marine's leg.

Full transcript for the story is here.

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