Given my limited understanding of genetics and medicine, why can we not make new organs for ourselves from our own stem cells? Is this a limitation of telling the stem cell what to produce? Do we lack the right container/structure/scaffold to build it on/in? I get that limbs might be difficult but liver, kidney, sheet of skin for skin grafts?
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>Is this a limitation of telling the stem cell what to produce?
I think you’re overestimating how easy this is to modern day science, which is to say, it really isn’t. Getting an induced stem cell (the sort you can relatively easily get from an adult human) to faithfully imitate just a single given cell type is already very difficult. And while a whole limb may have more diverse and overall even more complicated structures, organs are still complex enough as to be beyond our ability to engineer (do you know what a kidney looks like on the inside?).
>Is this a limitation of telling the stem cell what to produce?
I think you’re overestimating how easy this is to modern day science, which is to say, it really isn’t. Getting an induced stem cell (the sort you can relatively easily get from an adult human) to faithfully imitate just a single given cell type is already very difficult. And while a whole limb may have more diverse and overall even more complicated structures, organs are still complex enough as to be beyond our ability to engineer (do you know what a kidney looks like on the inside?).
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