Croatian hospitals demonstrate they can follow the latest trends in medicine.
“Destiny is not a matter of coincidence, but of choice, and not something to wait for but something to achieve“. This was a slogan by William J. Bryan, an American politician, that was displayed on the wall projector as professor Anthony Atala was getting ready for his presentation at Croatia’s Academy of Arts and Sciences, reports Večernji List on June 13, 2016.
Dr. Atala keeps the destiny of many patients in his hands, while the public has come to know him as “the man who grew human organs in his lab”. He is the director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina, and has won many awards throughout his career. His work on growing human tissue, cells and organs, and implanting them has been declared numerous times as a key development that is changing both our present and our future. Fifteen years ago, he created and printed a bladder which was then implanted into a patient and is functioning properly.
Asked about his statement that the final goal is to be able to “produce” solid organs and about the status of the efforts related to that goal, Atala said that there has been an advancement achieved in that field. “The process keeps evolving and we keep moving forward regarding the technology. We have started to treat different diseases of solid organs, and there are many clinical research projects going on, as well as several technologies being developed. We are currently working on about 30 different organs and tissues and each one is at a different stage. We have made a functional kidney, but the regulatory process in the United States is very long. However, at the same time, we have to make sure that all these technologies keep going forward”.
Dr. Atala added that his team is very satisfied with the outcome of recent procedures, including transplantation of bladders. “Regenerative, personalized medicine is the key. You follow the course of the disease, you take the tissue from the patient’s organ and make the new tissue that will be right for that patient and implant it. The procedure cannot be more perfect than that. I am very optimistic regarding the results and the future”.
Dr. Atala is visiting Croatia at the invitation of professor Dragan Primorac. He said that he went to the St. Catherine Hospital in Zabok and saw what professor Primorac and his team were doing. “This is a place of cooperation for us, and I want to bring new technologies to St. Catherine. The goal for all of us is to keep developing science and technology to be able to help patients. This is the right place for international cooperation as some technologies are already being implemented. Recently, stem cells have been transplanted in this hospital from the patient’s fat tissue into the destroyed knee cartilage. These are the opportunities and goals of the medicine – to help people”, Atala said.
Asked whether St. Catherine Hospital will participate in bioengineering of human organs, he said he believed that this hospital was their partner in Europe in the field of regenerative medicine.
