Very cool news - growing your own kidney

From the UK Guardian:

Kidney grown in lab successfully transplanted into rat
Scientists have grown a kidney in a laboratory and shown that it works when implanted into a living animal. The work is an important step towards the longer-term goal of growing personalised replacement organs that could be transplanted into people with kidney failure.

A bit more:

In the latest work, Harald Ott of Massachusetts General hospital led a team of scientists who grew a kidney by using an experimental technique that has previously been used to create working hearts, lungs and livers.

Ott first took a rat kidney and stripped out its functional cells using a solution of detergent. That left behind a white cellular matrix, the collagen scaffold that gives the organ its three-dimensional structure.

His team then introduced kidney and blood vessel cells from newborn rats onto the scaffold and cultured the growing organ for 12 days, until the cells had grown to cover the scaffold. The team then implanted the organ into a living rat, where it successfully filtered the animal's blood and produced urine. The work is published on Sunday in Nature Medicine.

It builds on methods pioneered by the American bioengineer Doris Taylor, who first used it in 2008 to grow whole, beating hearts. She described the collagen structure left behind after the bleach had done its work as being like the "gristle" in a steak.

As soon as we can do this without requiring a stripped-down kidney for a support matrix, the faster we can be able to grow replacement organs for individuals. Although my artificial hip is fantastic, I would much rather have a replacement bone and cartelidge joint. More. Faster...