Stockholm, July 10 (Newswire): An international team of surgeons have successfully carried out the world's first transplant of a synthetic windpipe, the Swedish hospital where the groundbreaking operation took place said.
On June 9, a 36-year-old man suffering from late stage tracheal cancer, received a new trachea, or windpipe, made from a synthetic scaffold and covered with his own stem cells, the Karolinska University Hospital in the Stockholm suburb of Huddinge said.
The so-called regenerative medical procedure could, according to the hospital, revolutionise the field of trachea transplants, making them far more accessible.
"Transplantations of tissue engineered windpipes with synthetic scaffolds in combination with the patient's own stem cells as a standard procedure means that patients will not have to wait for a suitable donor organ," it pointed out. This would be especially beneficial to children, "since the availability of donor tracheas is much lower than for adult patients," it said.
The transplant team was led by professor Paolo Macciarini of Karolinska and included professor Alexander Seifalian of the University College London, who designed and built the artificial windpipe.
Researchers at Harvard Bioscience, meanwhile, made a special bioreactor used to seed the scaffold with the patient's stem cells, which were allowed to grow on the synthetic windpipe for two days before the transplant took place.
The synthetic trachea had been used as a last possible option, according to the team, since the man's tumour had despite radiation treatment grown so large it was threatening to block his entire windpipe and there was no suitable donor available.
On June 9, a 36-year-old man suffering from late stage tracheal cancer, received a new trachea, or windpipe, made from a synthetic scaffold and covered with his own stem cells, the Karolinska University Hospital in the Stockholm suburb of Huddinge said.
The so-called regenerative medical procedure could, according to the hospital, revolutionise the field of trachea transplants, making them far more accessible.
"Transplantations of tissue engineered windpipes with synthetic scaffolds in combination with the patient's own stem cells as a standard procedure means that patients will not have to wait for a suitable donor organ," it pointed out. This would be especially beneficial to children, "since the availability of donor tracheas is much lower than for adult patients," it said.
The transplant team was led by professor Paolo Macciarini of Karolinska and included professor Alexander Seifalian of the University College London, who designed and built the artificial windpipe.
Researchers at Harvard Bioscience, meanwhile, made a special bioreactor used to seed the scaffold with the patient's stem cells, which were allowed to grow on the synthetic windpipe for two days before the transplant took place.
The synthetic trachea had been used as a last possible option, according to the team, since the man's tumour had despite radiation treatment grown so large it was threatening to block his entire windpipe and there was no suitable donor available.
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