The bionic penis is now a reality

[The_Skeptic]

TUESDAY, May 23 (HealthDay News) — Success with randy, replicating rabbits suggests that an "artificial penis" made from a patient's own penile cells might someday help men challenged by tough-to-treat impotence.

In the study, adult male rabbits with severely damaged penises received a graft of specially engineered penile tissue. The animals then re-grew full penises that functioned normally — even to the point of successfully impregnating females.

"This is very exciting — the researchers have been working on this for a long time in a variety of different organs. It's not yet clinically available, but if it works and proves safe and effective, it would be a tremendous advance," said Dr. Ira Sharlip, a spokesman for the American Urological Association and a clinical professor of urology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Sharlip was not involved in the study, which was led by Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. His team reported its findings Tuesday at the American Urological Association annual meeting, in Atlanta.

Drugs like Cialis, Levitra and Viagra have revolutionized the treatment of impotence for millions of men over the past decade. However, some forms of erectile dysfunction remain very difficult to treat.

A condition called "corporal fibrosis" — where the tubes of penile "spongy tissue" that maintain erection are gradually replaced by inactive, fibrous scar tissue — remains largely untreatable. The disorder occurs when the penis' sensitive spongy-tissue cells don't get the oxygen they need to survive, usually because of a chronic reduction in blood flow.

"It's relatively common in men with diabetes and various forms of vascular disease, or men who've previously had infections — usually infections of a penile prosthesis," Sharlip said. "There are men who have such severe fibrosis that nothing can be done to restore their natural erection function, other than to implant a surgical prosthesis," he added.



http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healtho...1994541&page=1