Windpipe created from stem cells a success

PARIS: A woman who received a donor windpipe seeded with her own stem cells, is living healthily after the groundbreaking surgery five years ago, said a report in medical journal The Lancet.

"These results confirm what we, and many patients, hoped at the time of the original operation: that tissue engineered transplants are safe and effective in the long term," said Paolo Macchiarini who led the surgical team.

The journal hailed progress in tissue engineering when reporting the success of the surgery involving stem cells, which are immature cells that can 'grow' into specialised cells that can comprise and maintain the human body.

Donor windpipes are often rejected by the recipient's immune system, while patients also suffer the uncontrolled die-off of cells, called necrosis, and bleeding.

In the 2008 procedure performed on Claudia Castillo, the use of stem cells from the patient was tested to find out if the risk of attack by the immune system would be reduced.

The then 30-year-old woman who suffered from tuberculosis, received a new lease on life with the transplant that involved removing cells from a section of a donor windpipe and grafting cartilage cells grown from her own stem cells onto it.

Other cells taken from a healthy part of her windpipe were also used in the operation that saw the patient being discharged from hospital 10 days later.

The surgical team, led by Paolo Macchiarini from Stockholm's Karolinska University Hospital, could only determine the success of the operation through long-term follow-ups with the patient.

"The recipient continues to enjoy a good quality of life, and has not experienced any immunological complications or rejection of the implanted airway," said the findings published in The Lancet medical journal.

The report also noted that the patient continues to enjoy "a normal social and working life".

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Windpipe created from stem cells a success