Outliers knows hospitals are working hard to become “green.” But now comes a suggestion that pushes a few limits: Researchers have proposed expanding the scope of recycling to include discarded human kidneys, saying they may serve a role in building replacement organs.
Researchers from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., wrote in the journal Biomaterials that almost 20% of kidneys can't be used for transplant. The researchers instead propose that those kidneys be cleaned by pumping a mild detergent through them and then using a process called decellularization to remove all cells but the organ structure. Then a patient's own cells could be added to the “scaffold” of the organ structure, creating an organ that theoretically would be easier for the patient's body to accept.
