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Scientists have grown a perfectly compatible ear in a lab and grafted it onto a patient, in what they said was a world first in regenerative medicine.
The groundbreaking technique saw them use the patient's own ear cartilage cells to form a new one.
Five children suffering from a condition known as microtia, in which the external ear is underdeveloped, have undergone the experimental surgery.
The first child to have the procedure two-and-a-half years ago was showing no signs the body has rejected or accidentally absorbed the new cells, the Chinese team who developed the procedure wrote when they published their findings in the journal EBioMedicine.
Currently the widely used treatments for microtia include the use of silicone prosthetic ears, or rib-cartilage reconstruction, which has mixed results.
The new technique involves taking a scan of the child's unaffected ear, reversing the dimensions and 3D-printing a biodegradable mould punctuated with tiny holes.
Cartilage cells taken from the recipient's other, unaffected ear are then used to fill the holes while the new ear is still in the lab.
Over three months the cartilage cells begin to grow in the shape of the mould, and the mould itself begins to break down.
While this process is underway, the ear is grafted onto the recipient.
"It's a very exciting approach," Tessa Hadlock, a reconstructive plastic surgeon at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston, told New Scientist, which first reported on the research.
Guangdong Zhou, et. al. In Vitro Regeneration of Patient-specific Ear-shaped Cartilage and Its First Clinical Application for Auricular Reconstruction, EBioMedicine, DOI: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2018.01.011
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday February 04 2018, @08:37PM (1 child)
Actually, the ears are quite good taken as a design. The inner folds of cartilage cause time delays that facilitate locating the exact 3-D position at which the sound comes from. Cats only evolved to have 2-D hearing, but we evolved in trees, and 3-D hearing was important.
WTF are you talking about? This is quite simply wrong. Cats have far better 3D hearing than we do; they have to, because they're small animal hunters. The parabolic dish-like shapes of their ears is very directional, and they can actively move their ears, independently, in different directions, to selectively "aim" their hearing. We can't, we can only turn our heads. We could never hope to hear and pinpoint the location of small prey the way a cat can.
The frequency resolution is also quite good.
Now I know you're smoking something. Humans are infamous for having lousy high-frequency hearing. Pretty much every animal can hear well over 20kHz; most humans are lucky if they can hear 15kHz. Ever heard of a "dog whistle"?
A lot of the "remarkable hearing" attributed to dogs is just that they aren't distracted thinking about other things.
Sorry, this one is stupid. Dog whistles, according to a quick google search, are in the 23-54kHz range. Almost no humans can hear over 22kHz (which is why the upper range for CDs is set at that), and there is absolutely no possible way you can hear above 30kHz, let alone above 50kHz, no matter how hard you concentrate. Your ears simply aren't capable of it, not now, and not when you were a kid either.
Humans aren't completely physically inferior to other mammals, but with hearing we really are, whether you choose to believe it or not. Our advantage isn't in sensory abilities; what we're good at is 1) grasping and manipulating, thanks to our opposable thumbs and hands that we don't have to walk on since we're bipedal, and 2) long-distance running. Our vision and hearing basically suck though, even in the best human specimens, and our olfactory senses are even worse. It's OK, because we just aren't meant to be the best lone predators (like cats), we're meant to be good at using our big brains and hands to build technology and work together.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @11:13PM
I think what he meant was the cats only hear in black and white, while humans have the full range of spectra in our hearing, because we lived in trees.