Reconstructed bladder

Tissue engineering may open the way for bladder replacement in patients who have lost their own bladder due to some disease. In a scientific breakthrough, tissue engineers have reconstructed the urinary bladder of a dog. This was done by extracting cells from both the outside and the inside of the bladder wall, expanding them in culture for four weeks and then placing them onto a bladder shaped degradable polyester textile. Finally, these constructs were implanted into dogs whose bladders had been removed. The new bladder wall performed successfully for one year ( Nature , Vol 398, No 6724).