Building a complex human organ in the lab is no longer a dream
of science fiction. At London’s Royal Free Hospital, a team of
30 scientists is manufacturing a variety of body parts,
including windpipes, noses and ears. WSJ’s Gautam Naik reports.
Photo: Gareth Phillips Science Fiction Comes Alive as
Researchers Grow Organs in Lab MADRID—Reaching into a stainless
steel tray, Francisco Fernandez-Aviles lifted up a gray, rubbery
mass the size of a fat fist. It was a human cadaver heart that
had been bathed in industrial detergents until its original
cells had been washed away and all that was left was what
scientists call the scaffold. Next, said Dr. Aviles, “We need to
make the heart come alive.” Inside a warren of rooms buried in
the basement of Gregorio Marañón hospital here, Dr. Aviles and
his team are at the sharpest edge of the bioengineering
revolution that has turned the science-fiction dream of building
replacement parts for the human body into a reality. Since a
laboratory in North Carolina made a bladd