Stem Cells Build a Better Rat Penis
Do you need an improved penis? Are you a rat? Then you’re in luck, thanks to a new adult stem cell therapy in the works.
In all seriousness, penile reconstruction is a serious need and a very challenging medical issue. This is very cool news:
Men with penis injuries, deformities, or severe Peyronie’s disease—which causes excessive scarring that can curve or shrink the penis—sometimes need surgery to reconstruct their genitalia and restore their sexual function. Many receive a graft made of their own tissue, cadaver tissue, or pig intestines, but the surgery can cause complications, including erectile dysfunction.
… The team seeded pig intestine grafts with adult stem cells taken from fat tissue in rats. Because rats don’t develop Peyronie’s disease, the researchers had to induce scarring by making incisions in the rodent penises. They then operated on the scarred rats, removing part of the scar tissue and supplanting it with a graft, as is done in patients with severe Peyronie’s disease.
And in even better news, they were fully functional (read: erections)! Considering that Peyronie’s disease affects as many as 9% of males, this is real stem cell progress.
(via ScienceNOW)
