Stefan Kappe, principal investigator, Seattle BioMed, Seattle, US, @SeattleBioMed Stefan studies how malaria parasites develop in mosquitoes and in the livers of mammals, and works on developing new drugs and vaccines.
The elderly are more sensitive to the effects of drugs and alcohol, as old livers are less efficient.
These secondaries were the results of cells from primary colorectal or breast cancers breaking off and lodging in the livers of the patients in question 1,400 of them.
And if Dr Takebe transplanted them to their host's abdominal cavity, having first caused the animal's real liver to fail, they often kept the mouse alive when an animal without the transplant would have died.Translating this work into a way of growing new livers for people whose old ones have stopped working will take time.
It will, however, require printers capable of producing far finer details than are currently possible, in order to recreate the tiny cellular structures in livers and kidneys.
As a farmer who had moved to the city himself, he spoke the language of the peasants forced from their plots by landslides, the fishermen whose stocks were dead, the weeping, terrified villagers whose livers had been enlarged by strontium in the river water.
The upshot was that the fat-retaining livers were rich in a variety of proteins known to help the body digest and store food.
They were then slaughtered, their livers removed, and those livers immediately trimmed of their blood vessels and chilled for six hours.So far, so normal.
And some surgeons think they have found a way to make that dream come true: by husbanding pigs not for their chops but for their hearts, livers, lungs and even their neurons.
Mr Mandel invites sceptics to imagine a future in which doctors can 3D-print livers (and other organs) on demand a technology that looks increasingly realistic.
