ANTHONY ATALA (Peru, 1958).
Anthony Atala:
Grinding Out New Organs One at a Time. Give this pediatric urologist 6
weeks or so, and he'll grow a working bladder; or artery. Regenerative medicine is a practice that aims to refurbish diseased or damaged tissue using the body's own healthy cells. AA: Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and Chair of the Department of Urology at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in the state of North Carolina in the United States.
ANTHONY ATALA, portrait by
Graziano Origa, pen&ink, blowout retino + letraset + pantone, 20X35, framed for Nòva100, 2009.
«Being a pediatric urologist, my initial interest was in the area of bladder tissue engineering. We then used the knowledge that we gained in engineering bladders to engineer other organ structures, both within and outside the genitourinary tract. Our interest in nuclear transplantation was a natural extension of our studies, as we were searching for new sources of cells for organ reconstruction, especially for patients with extensive end-stage organ disease, where normal cells may be sparse» (AA)
«The the amniotic fluid stem cells come from the foetus, which breathes and sucks in, then excretes, the amniotic fluid throughout pregnancy. Like embryonic stem cells, they appear to thrive in lab dishes for years, while normal cells, called somatic cells, die after a time. They are easier to grow than human embryonic stem cells. And, unlike embryonic stem cells, they do not form a type of benign tumour called a teratoma. » (AA)
«A bank with 100,000 specimens of the amniotic stem cells theoretically could supply 99 per cent of the US population with perfect genetic matches for transplants» (AA)
