Livers revitalized from a bag like this full of human cells. Ears grown from living cartilage. Thumbs, sculpted from coral. Needed parts and vital organs, from the lab and into bodies. Sound too good to be true, or more like science fiction? lt's closer to reality than you might think, and it's next on 21st Century Medicine's Regenerating Life. What if you were so severely burned that you couldn't recognize your own face in the mirror, but a skin patch made of discarded human cells could painlessly restore it to normal? Suppose you were a promising young athlete and the cartilage in your knee was damaged beyond repair, but with the help of a serum-based growth solution it was possible to grow new cartilage? lmagine breaking a bone that refused to heal and facing a life of pain and disability, but then being offered an experimental putty filled with protein to help you heal. Or what if you needed a new liver, but instead of a major transplant doctors simply repaired your old one?

All of this is becoming possible, thanks to an entirely new field of medicine called tissue engineering. The ultimate goal is to repair any and all organs by regrowing healthy cells in a lab and then reinjecting them back into the body. We are already growing blood vessels, cartilage and bone. And now have off-the-shelf skin. The cells in one tiny piece of this skin can produce enough healthy skin to cover five football fields. Not only amazing, but true. And for burn patients like Catherine O'Leary, it's nothing short of a modern-day miracle. lt was Saturday, July 18th, 1998 and former operating room nurse Catherine O'Leary and her husband Cyril were doing what they loved most, sailing.

The plan this particular weekend was to sail across the harbor from their picturesque home of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, drop anchor and spend the night across the bay near Cape Cod. The next morning, just like she did every day on the boat, Catherine got up early to make the coffee. l got up. l went to the galley. l got the coffeepot out, the coffee. But when she turned on the stove and lit the match, in an instant the peaceful weekend quickly ended. Then, as l lit, went to light the stove, that was when the fire just consumed me. The alcohol stove had somehow misfired, exploding in her face and instantly engulfing Catherine and the boat's galley in uncontrollable flames. l heard my wife screaming. And that alerted me. l woke up and turned and saw her all aflame.

She was, her hair, her face, her clothing, all on fire. The first thing l screamed was, ''Help! l'm burning. Cyril. Wake up! You got to help me! l'm going to die!'' She was engulfed in flame. And l just, l didn't think at all. l just reacted. l was just going to put the flame out. And l did that as quickly as it could be done. Cyril put out the fire with a blanket, burning his arms and legs from the intense heat in the process. Fortunately, within minutes after the explosion, a Coast Guard cutter arrived. Catherine and Cyril were airlifted to the nearest burn trauma center, Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, ironically, the same hospital where she had worked as a nurse 29 years ago.

l could feel myself being moved through doors. She had third degree burns on her arms and second degree burns on her face. Third degree burns completely destroy both layers of skin and cause severe scarring. While second-degree burns also leave terrible scars, not all the skin cells are killed. Those few remaining cells were Catherine's only hope of getting back the face she had come to recognize as her own, the face Cyril had fallen in love with. We photographed them immediately and then photographed their progress on a... lt would be up to Dr. Robert Demling, Director of the Burn Trauma Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital to save Catherine's face.

He said he knew it would not be easy. This is Catherine on admission. And this whitish area on the lower part of her face involving her nose and her neck is deep burn. And this char on her forehead is also deep burn. lt's dead surface skin. She has a tube in her mouth because she's on a ventilator at this point in time. The ventilator was needed to keep Catherine from suffocating. Her burns were so bad and her swelling so severe that her air passage was in danger of being squeezed shut from the swollen tissue. Doctor Demling quickly stabilized Catherine. And then he turned his attention to her scarring. Once you get a burn, your face, particularly on a facial burn, your features are very distorted, especially from the swelling and the color change. So it would be hard to even recognize your own relatives.

Cyril's burns were fairly minor. But he was still in pain. He couldn't lose the image of seeing his wife's face on fire, and he couldn't help thinking about what she might look like once she recovered. l thought she'd be a, l thought she'd be a mess afterwards, and... Demling knew there was only one way to keep Catherine's face from being scarred beyond recognition, and it was the skin patch being developed here at Advanced Tissue Sciences. Researchers at the La Joya, California company have come up with a way to create human skin, skin that would cover Catherine's burned face and give her back her beauty. But before skin can be grown, it has to have a seed, a tiny bit of natural material that can tell the new artificial skin how to grow. This 21st Century skin comes from an ancient religious and medical practice.

lt comes from the discarded foreskins of circumcised baby boys. So we take these surgical discards, enzymatically treat the tissue to remove the cells, and then start our cell banks. And it's really remarkable, because these are young, healthy cells that have a tremendous potential to grow. And from one starting material, we can actually get 250,000 square feet of final product. That's five football fields of new skin from one tiny foreskin. As thin as a paper towel, biodegradable skin is the first FDA approved tissue regenerated product. Doctor Demling thought it could save Catherine's face. Not only would the skin eliminate scaring, but it would eliminate something else that has always been part of burn treatment, pain. traditional care, which requires painful wound care dressings two, three times a day for several days.

So painful, that morphine has to be given to the patients. Until now, doctors have used the skins from animals or cadavers to cover severe burns. But patients' immune systems react violently to both. However, the skin flap eliminates the possibility of rejection because of the way it is made. The cells themselves are surrounded by a natural secreted matrix. So they basically are coated by collagen and other naturally secreted proteins which are not different from one person to another. So what the immune system sees are not the cells, but the matrix that surrounds them, sees that as self, and doesn't reject them. And then on day eight we can see most... The laboratory-grown skin would remain on Catherine's face while her own skin grew underneath. ln only a week, the patch is peeled off, almost like a Band-Aid.

The results are immediately apparent. new skin on her face now. This miracle skin did save Catherine's face. But her arms were too severely burned for the skin patch. Tissue regeneration saved my psychic. l'm so scared on my arms. But my face is fine. And that's because within a couple of hours from... l was in Brigham and Women's. And a few hours after that, l had the treatment. Doctors say Catherine's face is remarkably radiant and completely unscarred. lf they had treated her the conventional way without the regenerating effects of the skin patch, that would not be the case. She really has no scar today. And l would have predicted more scar on her face if we would have used the standard treatment. Thanks to 21st Century medicine's ability to regenerate life, Catherine's radiant smile is shining again.

lt's my whole world, my whole being, my whole ability to go out and face the world and go back to work as quickly as l did, be able to function as quickly as l did to be able to sit her on the boat, it's all because of the technology. Early success with growing skin for burn patients like Catherine O'Leary has led scientists to explore the possibility of growing even thicker tissues in the laboratory, tissues as thick as human cartilage. The pain from torn, damaged and dead cartilage is a curse to a young athlete like Morgan Montgomery. Morgan suffers osteochronditis, a wearing down of his cartilage. But after four knee operations, only temporary relief was in sight. He began riding a bike to help his cartilage and liked it so much, he began cycling competitively. But his knee was still a problem, and not getting better. He pedaled on despite the pain. Then he learned about a procedure that could replace his cartilage, a procedure that could get him back on track and put him in the race for a spot on the US Olympic Team.

Oh, this feels great. That, my one problem, feels just like a normal knee. Last year, Morgan underwent a Carticel cartilage replacement procedure. Healthy cartilage cells from his good knee were grown and multiplied in a lab, and then reinserted into his damaged knee. lf l hadn't had this Carticel procedure, l wouldn't be doing this right now. There's no way. Number 125, Morgan Montgomery. Number 1 14... Today, Morgan's racing in the EDS Cup, a national race in his home state of Minnesota. lf he wins, he'll be another step closer to making the Olympic Team. They're off! 120 laps, 30 kilometers. We count number one, two and three points race. Meanwhile in North Carolina, Kevin Ketchie is about to have the same procedure Morgan had. Ever since the 28 year-old tore the cartilage in his left knee playing basketball, he can only sit on the sidelines and watch. Sometimes, that hurts almost as much as his knee. l can pretty much keep my mind off of it if l stay away from here, you know? Just don't think about it too much. But you can tell when l came in here, it was kind of hard for me to just kind of sit around. l still want to be out there, so... But Kevin hasn't taken a shot since the night his knee gave out.

l finished playing that game actually. Did pretty well. Went home and the next morning l knew that l had really done something to it at that point. Kevin faces a daily reminder of that night every morning when he goes to work. l have a hard time at work just because of the fact that working at old Courthouse, doesn't have an elevator. And my office is on the third floor, which, l really don't have a hard time getting up the stairs to the office. Coming downstairs takes a little longer just because of the way the knee moves. lt could be a prediction of what lies ahead, a lifetime of pain. Doctors told Kevin that sooner or later he would have to have the knee replaced with a mechanical one. More than 200,000 knee replacements are performed every year. And they work great, except for one catch. Kevin's mother is a nurse. And she told him that if he got a new knee at 28, he would need another one at 43. That was enough for Kevin. lf my mother wasn't a nurse, l probably would have went ahead and had the procedure done here in town with the first physician l went to. But she thought it was better through all of her experience to go ahead and get a second opinion.

So Kevin headed down the road from his home in Greensboro to Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He sought the advice or orthopedic surgeon Doctor Larry Higgins. lnstead of a knee replacement, Doctor Higgins told Kevin that he could have a Carticel cartilage implant. This procedure isn't for everyone. lt's clear. lt has very limited indications. This is not a treatment for arthritis. This is a treatment for someone who has loss of cartilage in a focal area on the femur bone and has an intact, that the remainder of the knee ligaments and the remainder of the cartilage ligaments are intact. The first step was to remove healthy cartilage cells from Kevin's right knee, the one he hadn't injured. The cells were shipped to Genzyme Tissue Repair in Cambridge, Massachusetts and injected with growth nutrients, a sort of fertilizer for human cells. To repair Kevin's knee, Doctor Higgins will need 12 million healthy cartilage cells. Along with the basketball. Just a month later, the new cells for Kevin's knees are ready.

So Kevin and his mom return to Duke, where Kevin sees them bringing in his restored cartilage. l think l saw them bring the cells in, in the box a while ago. Saw a guy coming in with a box that had Carticel written on the side of it. And my mom, of course, was like, ''There's your stuff.'' At this time, doctors can't use the minimally invasive arthroscopic approach to replace cartilage. So once Kevin is in the operating room, Doctor Higgins wraps his leg in an elastic bandage. And that will allow us to minimize our blood loss and allow us to implant the cartilage in a bloodless field, which is the ideal growing conditions for the new cartilage we're going to implant. Doctor Higgins can now open up Kevin's knee and look directly at the joint. And this here is normal cartilage. This nice, white, shiny cartilage here is all normal cartilage. And that's what we like to see when we look in the knee of someone who's Kevin's age. This here is a big cartilage defect. And that is what's causing the discomfort that he's having and his inability to participate in sports.

The cartilage cells taken from Kevin's right knee are ready to be injected into his left. And these are Kevin's cells, all suspended in the fluid there. And we're going to take these and then l'm going to slowly inject Kevin's cells into the little patch that we made for him. All Doctor Higgins has to do now is close up Kevin's knee. And this is the final stitch we're going to put in. And that is the patch with the cells in it. And we'll let that sit for a few more minutes. And that's the end. And because the local anesthetic was used, Kevin hears the results of his surgery while still on the operating table. Okay? Kevin, everything went great. lmplantation went perfect. So, good news. That's good news for Kevin and for thousands of people who injure the cartilage in their knees every year. He'll be on crutches for about ten weeks, then start rehab. By a year, he'll be released to full activities, playing one-on-one basketball, being able to compete at whatever level he wants to compete at.

And that's really the purpose for doing this procedure. So how's the knee feeling? Oh, it feels great. lf Kevin had any doubts about the operation, all he has to do is look at cyclist Morgan Montgomery. Thanks to 21st Century medicine's ability to regrow cartilage, Morgan is not only back in the race, he's winning. Very close. l would say, Montgomery! Nice race. Morgan Montgomery is once again pointing towards the Olympics, something that wouldn't be possible without the Carticel implant. From growing healthy cartilage and restoring dreams, doctors move to an even greater challenge growing actual body parts. We've seen how cartilage can be harvested from a healthy knee, grown in a laboratory and used to heal an injured one. But can doctors take that one step farther? Can 21st Century medicine actually regenerate the human skeleton? Can we grow bones? Sarah Whiteley takes pictures of bones for a living. She's a radiographer. But a simple fall while walking through the park near her home in Wakefield, England turned her into a patient with a bone fracture that wouldn't heal. She landed on her back and left shoulder, and felt something crack.

lt was her collarbone. And it was a silly accident, really. Nothing exciting. l was walking through the park. lt was raining. l slipped on wet leaves. l had my arms full of shopping. l didn't have the sense to drop what l was carrying. So l landed on the back of my shoulder and broke my collarbone. Because of where the bone fractured, it wouldn't heal. So doctors installed a plate to help it along. But after a few weeks, the plate worked itself out of position. A second surgery failed. A third surgery used a bone graft taken from Sarah's hip to keep the plate in place. Once again, the plate worked itself out of place in a matter of weeks. A silly accident had become a far more serious problem. Sarah was in so much pain that she couldn't even make a cup of tea. lt was a big problem. Even down to every-day things like making a cup of tea, housework, even going out to work. By lunchtime l was in an awful lot of pain. Right down the back of my shoulder blade, across my collarbone, up into my neck.

l couldn't move my arm to do anything. So it was becoming a major problem, something that had to be dealt with. Can l see the other side as well? Let me see this. The surgeon who performed Sarah's third operation, Doctor Simon Lambert, soon learned that her collarbone wouldn't heal using conventional methods. lt was like trying to glue a leg onto a table, then resting the table on the leg that was just set. The bond simply didn't have time to take. And down the back of your hands. So Doctor Lambert decided that Sarah's shoulder needed two things. The first was a new type of plate with a hook to hold the broken bone segments together more securely. The second was an experimental putty. We were running out of options at that point. lf l wanted to go back to work and carry on leading a normal life, we had to find something that was going to work and work quickly. The putty was a synthetic material called osteogenic protein one, or OP-1.

Tests had shown that it helps broken bones grow together. And Doctor Lambert said it was Sarah's last chance. lf bone can heal, OP-1 will make it heal. The putty is used then to fill and modeled to look like the host bone. And we then hope that it then induces bone formation from the host. That's the important thing. lt doesn't actually produce bone in the putty. lt induces bone formation in the host bone, which then should meet across the putty. OP-1 works as a sort of bridge between two broken bones. Within the putty is a morphogenetic protein, the same protein that stimulates broken bones to regrow. OP-1 is still considered experimental, but has been used on approximately 500 patients. OP-1 could eliminate the need for bone grafts. Right now, bone grafts are taken from other parts of the body, which can be very painful. Grafts are also taken from cadavers. But this procedure heightens the risk of rejection. OP-1 could also help Sarah. What happened in this particular instance, and we've used OP-1 specifically in this case, because at the end of her collarbone in that position there, there was a fracture which had failed to unite.

And after standard treatment of plates, screws and her own bone graft, it had still failed to unite. And rather than take her own bone again, which would have had OP-1 in it, her own OP-1 , we decided to use exogenous OP-1 and give her a slightly more stable construct and use the OP-1 to induce local bone formation. But Sarah wasn't so sure. The first few weeks after her collarbone was joined with OP-1 were no better than the weeks after the three previous operations. lt wasn't the miracle cure l was expecting. Progress was very, very slow. And there were times when l thought l had made a big mistake. Today, Sarah is having her shoulder examined. Sarah has said her shoulder has felt better lately, and her doctors are beginning to see results. Sarah spends her life looking at X-rays. And when she sees hers, she is convinced.

The OP-1 is working. So l think you are achieving the status quo, finally. Yeah? Yeah Five months. l'm so pleased. Even Doctor Lambert was surprised by how much the OP-1 had helped Sarah's bone heal. Sarah has, in fact, formed what appears radiologically to be normal bone in the gap where there was previously no bone and failure to unite a fracture. So, so far, there has been union. The OP-1 even induced bone growth in the old holes where the screws for the plates were inserted. Without OP-1 and its power to join bones, Sarah may never have been able to raise her arm above her head, and she certainly would have faced a lifetime of chronic pain. After four operations, she is finally on her way to full recovery. Take care. Have a nice Christmas. And you, too.

And as l say, a good New Year. OP-1 is the first material that can graft bones together. lt is also being used to fuse spines and to secure jawbones. Doctor Lambert believes that 21st Century medicine could eliminate the need for bone grafts. And broken bones won't necessarily mean weeks or months in a cast. At the moment, we have simply a bone induction agent. What would be good is to have a bone conduction agent, bone grows across it or through a matrix, in a way that actually reproduces woven bone very quickly. And that's where l think we're going to see the big advance in the 21st Century. And OP-1 is at the beginning of that. One person he won't have to convince is Sarah Whiteley. Hopefully from this point forward, l mean, we have very good bone growth at the moment. lt's progressing a lot better than it did to begin with. The fracture is stable. lt's healing nicely. lt'll probably take another three months for it to heal completely.

And once that's healed, they'll take the metal plate out so there won't be any problem with my shoulders or... Regrowing bones wasn't the first thing on Doctor Joseph Vacanti's mind when he decided to get into tissue engineering. The field didn't even exist. Eventually he would grow bones and much more. But in his younger years as a pediatric transplant surgeon at Childrens Hospital in Boston, all he knew was the children he saw were dying. And he wanted to do something about it. When l completed my training and the problem of organ shortage became my problem, then l decided, well, maybe the main thing to do is just make organs, and then we wouldn't have to rely on a supply that would never meet the need. And so with those beginnings in the 1980's with my good friend Professor Langer, we began down a road to try to understand what the problems might be and then go on to try to actually design and build a whole organ.

A pretty lofty goal. But his colleague, Bob Langer, an MlT chemical engineer, was no ordinary professor. And his specialty was building dissolvable plastic structures that harmlessly go away after giving new cells a place to grow, or as they are called in the world of tissue engineering, biodegradable polymer scaffolds. Soon, they were on to something. But what actually propelled them forward didn't come from a lab. lt came from the sea. lt was 1986, and Doctor Vacanti, or ''Jay'' as his friends call him, was on vacation in Cape Cod. He had never stopped pondering about how to build a liver. As he sat on the jetty watching his family play, he saw some seaweed. A major breakthrough in tissue engineering was about to happen. l could see seaweed waving through the water. As the water moved, so did the seaweed. And so, it struck me that the seaweed was answering that question. Doctor Vacanti's question was how to keep alive and grow the cells of tissue like cartilage, or eventually livers. The answer was the porous shape of the seaweed. lts shape allowed nutrients to reach a large number of cells both deep within and on the surface. The branches of seaweed were the key.

The fundamental repeating unit in nature for all living systems that are multicellular are branching systems. Like seaweed. Doctor Vacanti immediately phoned Professor Langer, and they began working on a dissolvable structure that would look and act like the seaweed, branching out and supporting life. Before long, they were seeding their dissolvable plastic scaffolds with living cells. This did exactly as the seaweed in the water did and it allowed the fluids to percolate through it and keep much larger, thicker masses of cells alive while they formed new tissue and laid down their own matrix. When they put these cell factories into bodies, blood vessels would grow into them, providing even more support. And eventually the plastic or polymer scaffolds would harmlessly go away. Soon, Doctor Vacanti's brother, Doctor Charles Vacanti, an anesthesiologist, joined the team. Earlier in his career Charles says he witnessed a patient die from a tumor on his windpipe, and knows it could be a different story today.

lf this patient walked into our institution today, we have the science and the ability to resect that particular segment of windpipe and that tumor and then to replace it with a tissue-engineered windpipe. By the early 1990's, the Vacantis and Professor Langer were growing cartilage. lt was significant research. But at the time, few people were paying attention. So they decided to grow something needing cartilage that no one had been able to create, an ear. So we decided to, we talked to a plastic surgeon, a Doctor Upton at the Beth lsrael Hospital, and he said that the gold standard for a plastic surgeon was to try to recreate the shape of a human ear. He said with all the technology that plastic surgeons had access to today, they still were not able to do that. So we said, ''Let's sit down and generate cartilage in the shape of a human ear.'' Charles and Doctor Upton needed help creating the mold that would dissolve harmlessly. When we'd start, we'd have the peptide solution and we'd have water, okay?

So they solicited the help of Doctor Linda Griffith, an MlT chemical engineer, who had come to Boston to work in the lab with Charles' brother Joseph and Professor Langer. And Charles had done this really fabulous work showing that you could combine cartilage cells with a polymer and get a piece of tissue to form, but lacked the ability to make that polymer in a specific shape. So they called me because they knew that l knew something about polymer processing. ln 1992, they presented their ear to the world, on the back of this mouse. They had taken another step towards realizing a dream of growing needed parts and organs. But the Vacantis work didn't stop here. ln 1998, Charles helped a 36 year-old machinist named Raul Mercia avoid living with a lifelong deformity by regrowing a thumb. And he was a laborer and working with industrial machine had chopped off the end of this thumb. Once again, the inspiration for an innovative solution would come from the depths of the sea.

We've actually used three materials from the sea. The first is the seaweed for structure. Second, coincidentally, the hydrogels that we use when we make a minimally invasive such as an injectable tissue is derived chemically from seaweed. And third, when we made the thumb implant for Mister Mercia, the base of the scaffolding was coral, which was derived from the sea and then injected with this seaweed derivative referred to as alginic acid containing his own bone cells. Specially treated coral was used because it's very porous and would provide a nice template for bone growth. lt's chemically very close to the matrix of bone. So the chemical content of coral is very similar to the chemical content of bone, minus the living cells. Over time, this coral would break down naturally. Full regeneration takes 16 weeks. Week one makes sure there is no rejection. At week ten, immature bone growth can already be seen. During week 12 to 14, there's new, mature bone growth.

And finally by week 16, ligaments and tendons are reattached, giving Raul Mercia almost normal use of his thumb. He can lift very heavy objects and it's fixed in this position. But it works exceedingly well. Fortunately, he can now give the procedure a thumb's up. He was very happy. Joseph Vacanti will tell you, there are many approaches for regenerating organs. lf you visit Doctor Lola Reid's lab at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, you'll find yet another possibility for the future of regenerating livers. You'll know the setup. Would you please get out one of the bags of the human cells? The Vacantis are not the only ones trying to eliminate the need for liver transplants. Doctor Lola Reid hopes to eliminate the need for most liver transplants in a different way, with non-invasive liver cell therapy. She believes she can do this by growing livers right in her lab. l want you to realize that there are special cells within the organ called stem cells, which are cells that are like seeds that can, in fact, flourish and grow and form the whole organ.

Reid is a scientist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She and her associates are the first to figure out how to purify these stem cells in bulk and use them to regenerate a liver. With help from researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, they have shown that these cells can form liver tissue. These cells would also be available whenever they are needed, something that could end up helping millions of people with liver damage, including a young girl named Maria Luisa Lujan in New Mexico. l want to meet N Sync. The only sign that Maria is sick is the slight yellowing of her eyes and face. They are reminders of her rare liver disease. Doctors first thought Maria had neonatal jaundice, which is common in newborns. lt usually repairs itself after the baby is placed under ultraviolet lights. But Maria never improved.

She was later diagnosed with Crigler-Najjar Syndrome. Her liver doesn't properly excrete wastes or bilirubin. Maria is one of only 150 people in the world with the disease. Because of it, this 13 year-old girl was not expected to see her 25th birthday. Maria says she never worries about her illness. But the same cannot be said of her father. Unless we find a cure, we don't know how long we'll have her. But there's a lot of other parents, at least 150 that l know of, that have children that do the same thing we do, care for their children and take the best care of them they can. That includes turning on Maria's UV lights every night, a much larger version of the bili lights that doctors first put Maria under when she was a baby. The heat from the lamps helps her sweat out the bilirubin her liver cannot eliminate.

Without the lights, Maria could have brain damage and might eventually die. Maria has never known life any other way. But her father says having a daughter who has to spend every night under these giant lights can take its toll on a family. lt's a devastating disease in more ways than one, you know? lt really takes it toll on the body and the person and the people in the family. Like l say, you just can't get up and go on vacation, can't go camping for two, three days. We haven't had a vacation since she was three years old. We just can't do it. Before Maria becomes an adult, she will need a liver transplant. That will make her one of nearly 14,000 Americans waiting for a new liver. But there will be only 4500 livers available. Odds that trouble Maria's father. She's my little girl. She's the only one. She's my only daughter. And l guess it's just the fatherly instinct to want to do more for your daughter. Lujan searched the internet and found Doctor lra Fox at the University of Nebraska.

Fox was one of a handful of surgeons using adult liver cells harvested from cadavers to regenerate the livers of patients like Maria's. But the new method still had the same, old problem, not enough livers and too many people who needed them. Finally, after two years of waiting, Maria's liver was infused with seven point five billion healthy liver cells. The treatment worked. And Maria can now go as long as two nights in a row without sleeping under the lamps. At least she had rosy cheeks, you know? And she looked really, really good. Her liver bilirubin level is the lowest they had ever been in her life. So we knew that it was, there was some hope and there was something working. But Maria had to wait two years for her cell infusion, something that patients in the future may not have to do.

Doctor Reid hopes to overcome the liver shortage by taking the cells of one liver and giving them to perhaps hundreds of patients. That means that we would be able to stockpile the cells in a tissue bank and be able to ship them at any time. So she wouldn't have to wait in the future, if we make use of the progenitor cell therapy. Only the young cells, the progenitor cells, can regenerate. And therefore they hold the key to turning a damaged liver into a normal one. Doctor Reid shoots the progenitor cells with a laser beam, which colors them and makes them easy to identify. And then there's a computer associated with it that can be told to take all the cells of a given color, let's say a yellow and orange ones, and put them into a particular test tube. And they will vibrate the solution to go to that test tube. Finally, the cells are frozen with liquid nitrogen. Because we will be able to store these cells frozen, it means that we can have lots of different types of donors with marker studies done on them.

And therefore we can match precisely a set of cells that would go into a given patient. The regenerated liver would have another advantage over the current treatment. Despite her progress, Maria still needs to take immunosuppressant drugs three times a day. Doctor Reid says this, too, will be eliminated in the 21st Century. So that means that that patient would basically be able to have a normal liver, normal function, within a couple of weeks. Let me just cast it in. The cell infusion has helped. But Maria has not been cured. The cells from the adult liver will not live forever. But because the process is so new, no one knows exactly how long they will last. lf Maria's health is threatened by rising bilirubin levels, Dr. Reid's cell therapy is her greatest hope. lt means Maria wouldn't have to wait for a donor.

She wouldn't need immunosuppressant drugs, and her family would never have to worry about her bilirubin levels again. lt's going to revolutionize all of transplant surgery. lt, indeed, what it's going to happen is that many of the transplant surgery that's done today will not be done in the future. We've a lot of homework. Doctor Reid predicts that the liver will be the first organ recreated in the lab to reach patients. But that will be only the beginning. The liver is going to be the first organ that is going to be done for cell therapy. But we think that all of the organs are going to be treated in this way in the future. More than 40,000 people a year suffer second degree burns. But to see Catherine O'Leary's face, you'd never know she is one of them. Morgan Montgomery continues to train for the Olympics, and rarely thinks about his knee or the lab-grown cartilage inside it. And Kevin Ketchie can look forward to an active life free from pain.

But even the 21st Century procedures they underwent may soon be outdated. So instead of having to go through a biopsy, and then having his own cells expanded and then additional surgeries to go and have his knee opened up and the cells themselves injected into the defect, we would have a readily available cartilage that is physiological human cartilage, acts like, feels like cartilage, to be able to insert into his knee in one minimally invasive procedure. Every day that Sarah Whiteley moves her left arm without pain, she is reminded of the wonders of 21st Century medicine. But the Vacanti's are working on projects that even in the 21st Century seem too spectacular to believe.

Joseph Vacanti hopes to grow an artery inside a human heart, and then an entire heart. Charles, his brother, is convinced that nothing is out of reach. l believe that if we harvest the appropriate cells and put them back into this tissue, into the correct environment with some type of architecture, that we will be able to generate new brain or spinal tissue. Skin and bones, cartilage and organs, even hearts, brains and spinal cords, all created in the laboratory. Testament to 21st Century medicine's ability to regenerate life.

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