Pedro Baptista: “We will be able to enter the era of regenerative medicine”

ARAID researcher at the IIS Aragón talks about artificial organs in an interview for ConSalud.es

The bioartificial organs are called to change the paradigm of the transplants and Donations worldwide. With innovation in this field “We will be able to enter the era of regenerative medicine”. This is what he tells in an interview for Consalud.es Pedro Baptista, researcher from the Aragonese Foundation for Research and Development (ARAID) at the Aragon Health Research Institute (IIS Aragon).

As this expert explains, bioartificial organs are those that They are created in the laboratory from liver cells or blood vessel cells. That is, "scaffolds that we generate from a rejected liver or from the liver of an animal, whose cells are seeded in a bioreactor until the organ matures. So far, research has managed to generate these organs in a laboratory and transplant them into pigs.

«At the moment we are managing to maintain the viable organs inside the pig by more than a month"Baptista points out. In the future, this researcher's team hopes to get these organs to the three or even six months viability and without any complications such as thrombosis. With these advances "we have overcome the great challenge within organ bioengineering, and now we are in a very interesting phase in which we are focusing on prolonging that time even further," he adds.

“At the moment we are managing to keep the organs viable inside the pig for more than a month”

Achievements like this will radically change the paradigm  of the transplants, because at the moment in which we have the capacity to generate organs in a laboratory, either with the patient's own cells or with donor cells, there will also be the possibility of increasing the availability  of the organs. In this way, "the limit of organs will be determined solely by the manufacturing availability we have," the expert emphasizes.

Although in Spain there is not the degree of organ shortage that occurs in other countries, mainly due to our excellent donation model, the fact that have a greater number of organs available This would allow for an increase in indications. Thus, "diseases for which we would not transplant today could benefit from these transplants with positive results." Furthermore, "at the moment in which we have the possibility of expanding the patient's own cells, we will begin to have autologous organs«In this way, says the researcher, «using the patient's own cells we will no longer need immunosuppression, since we will be generating organs that will not cause rejection.» It will therefore be a question of organs "for life."

These techniques are transferable to other organs, although there is an important structural difference between the cells of, for example, a lung or with a kidney. It is at this point that adapting these innovations will take longer, "but the main bottleneck, that is, creating vascular networks or blood vessels that can last and do not present thrombosis, It has already been achieved«From this perspective, we find that research in this field is very advanced. «I am confident that in the next five or ten years we will begin to see these studies at a more advanced level, leading to transplantation to the patient.»

“The moment we have the possibility of expanding the patient's own cells, we will begin to have autologous organs”

In addition to this important project, Baptista has made progress in another of his major investigations, in this case in the field of Print 3D. This is a study framed within 'Horizon Europe', which seeks to achieve the first 3D bioprinted liver for transplantation into immunodeficient pigs with cells from human donors. "This is an important step, using a different technique, to generate livers in the laboratory, which has major implications for automation, industrialization and for reducing the costs of all these technologies."

Likewise, the expert has pointed out another of his major projects (at the ISCIII), which in this case is "repairing" livers rejected for transplant in the laboratory due to donor problems. “Keeping organs alive in a machine outside the body opens a window to treat, medicate or regenerate the organ in a machine and try to recover its function to make it suitable for transplant.”

In short, with all these innovations on the table, the expert offers a positive and promising vision of the field of transplants. "The great bottleneck that we have already managed to solve to avoid thrombosis has made the field open and innovations become a reality in five or ten years." In turn, "it will help palliate la escasez of organs and we will enter into an era in which regenerative medicine is not just a research term, but something very real in hospitals«.

Source: ConSalud.es