Spinal Fluid Driven Artificial Organ
Dr. Ommaya has two children who suffer from Type 1 diabetes. Motivated by his personal experience with the disease, Dr. Ommaya focused on the problem of transplantation of islet cells for the treatment of diabetes. A major challenge facing survival of islet cells is immune rejection. Dr. Ommaya thought that the CSF would provided an ideal setting for transplanted islets due to the immune protection provided by the blood brain barrier. He developed an artificial organ which would house transplanted islets, and the cells could be nourished by the CSF. Ayub, Illani Atwater, and colleagues identified that ventricular-peritoneal CSF shunts provided an immune protected site for the transplantation of mouse and rat islets in dogs and llamas.22, 30 Ayub and colleagues also identified that CSF glucose mirrors blood glucose. Islets cells were able to survive in this system and function in the llama model, but further work on the model is needed.1 Unfortunately Dr. Ommaya was not able to complete this research.
Read more about this topic: Ayub K. Ommaya
Famous quotes containing the words fluid, driven, artificial and/or organ:
“Eye, gazelle, delicate wanderer,
Drinker of horizon’s fluid line;
Ear that suspends on a chord
The spirit drinking timelessness;
Touch, love, all senses;”
—Stephen Spender (1909–1995)
“Are we aware of our obligations to a mob? It is the mob that labour in your fields and serve in your houses—that man your navy, and recruit your army—that have enabled you to defy the world, and can also defy you when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair. You may call the people a mob; but do not forget that a mob too often speaks the sentiments of the people.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The most revolutionary invention of the Nineteenth Century was the artificial sterilization of marriage.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“And this mighty master of the organ of language, who knew its every stop and pipe, who could awaken at will the thin silver tones of its slenderest reeds or the solemn cadence of its deepest thunder, who could make it sing like a flute or roar like a cataract, he was born into a country without literature.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)