Around the Oriental Globe

ARTIFICIAL CELLS FOR MAN ATLANTIC CITY N.J.—A Chinese-born scientist reported progress toward developing "artificial body cells" which might eventually help fight such diseases as gout.
Such ceils, if perfected for humman use, would be pinhead-sized, nylon plastic capsules filled with human-cell chemicals, and mimicking some of the functions of the billions of living cells in the body. They would be used to treat blood in devices linked with the body by out-and-back again blood-flow tubes.
Dr. T. M. S. Chang, a physiologist at McGill University, Montreal, told about the quest—and of promising animal experiments with still-crude, pioneering versions of such cells — in an interview preceding a technical report to the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs.
The society, a group of 300 specialists devoted to exploring possibilities for, developing mechanical hearts, improved artificial kidneys and other robot of counterparts of man's vital organs, is holding its annual convention here.
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Chang stressed the artificial cell work still is in the experimental stage and that much more testing on animals must be done before there can be any thought of human trials.
Nevertheless, he said ,such cells conceivably could be improved to the stage where they might eventually be used to:
• Treat some diseases that are characterized by a deficiency of certain chemical enzymes—such as gout and phenylketonuria. The latter malady, called PKU for short, is a genetic—abnormality disease that results in mental deficiency.
• Treat certain liver and glandular ills that are characterized by deficiencies of other chemicals.
• Cleanse the blood of poisonous substances that might originate inside or outside the body.
In all instances, the idea would be to prepare capsules containing the required chemicals and let the patient's blood flow past the capsules in a special device.
The semi-permeable nylon plastic membrances of the capsules would allow a chemical exchange between elements
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CHINATOWN NEWS, APRIL 18, 1966