July 6, 2000 The Associated Press
Scientists have created an artificial thymus, a step that might someday help doctors manufacture disease-fighting blood cells in the lab for patients with damaged immune systems.
The synthetic organ might not only generate normal T cells to replace those lost to infection, chemotherapy, radiation therapy or aging, but perhaps specialized ones to attack tumors.
While scientists already have other ways to create T cells, the artificial thymus might work better, experts said.
The thymus gland is where the immune system's T cells - a major component of the immune system - mature. The creation of an artificial version is announced in the July issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology by scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
They seeded mouse thymus cells onto porous, round metal structures, and then stocked the structures with immature human cells. The experiment worked best with structures measuring about half an inch wide and about 0.04 inch deep. The setup began generating mature human T cells within two weeks.
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