[jolinar of malkshor]

Researchers have brought a dead animal heart back to life in the lab by repopulating it with healthy cells, a feat they believe may someday allow them to grow new hearts and other organs for people desperate for transplants.

In a paper published online Sunday in Nature Medicine, researchers at the University of Minnesota describe the process of revitalizing the heart of a euthanized laboratory rat, which begins with washing out the interior cells to leave just the outer shell of the organ.

The scientists then injected the empty sac with heart cells from newborn rats. Within days, the cells had multiplied to flesh out the heart, which began beating on its own.

"We've taken organs from cadavers, removed all the cells, put cells back in and been able to reanimate what was previously a dead organ," said molecular biologist Doris Taylor, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Repair at the University of Minnesota.

"What that means, we hope, is that one day if you need a new organ we'll be able to take your cells, transplant them into this framework or scaffold, and build you an organ that works for you," she said from Minneapolis-St. Paul.

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/...eneration.html

Not much longer folks and we will be creating organs in a dish in a lab. Average age will increase to well over 100