When I see things like this and think that we are maybe 5 years away from human trials of lab grown, transplantable hearts, I really hope that we're going to live forever.
The biggest problems re going to be cancer, genetic problems that only arise as we age, and perhaps most important of all, neurodegenerative diseases. The problem is that our cells are pre-programmed to only divide a fixed number of times, hence why stem cells help, but even they are limited. When this is "fixed" so the cells can divide indefinitely, it tends to turn into cancer, which is probably one reason this mechanism evolved in the first place.
I heard Michio Kaku talking about something he called The Human Body Shop --technology to provide h. sapiens replacement parts-- on the BBC two days ago. I remember thinking "What could a string theorist possibly know about biotechnology that's worth broadcasting to two hundred million listeners?"
This is quite impressive technology. Now they need to find a way to get more than one heart out of a 'decellularized heart'. At that point, we won't have any more problems with finding organ donations.
I don't think they can. The reason they use the "decellularized heart" is because they need a scaffold for the cells to grow on. This has basically been what's holding back growing organs.
They may, however, be able to use another mammal's heart for the scaffold, such as a cow or pig, with the help of some genetic engineering. I read something a while back about a group of scientists that genetically engineered a pig so that its organs could be transplanted into humans. If I remember correctly, a pig's organs have a salty layer on them or something making them incompatible with humans.
