Stem Cells Create Windpipe

A young boy from the UK has been fortunate to receive a potentially life-saving windpipe transplant to correct his rare condition called Long Segment Congenital Tracheal Stenosis. The disease plagues the patient with breathing difficulty on account of an extremely narrow airway. To comprehend the severity of the disease, know that the boy had been born with a tracheal diameter of roughly one millimeter. One could equate the affliction to breathing through a straw. Doctors had previously operated on the boy last year by expanding his windpipe with a metal stent; however, complications emerged from erosion of the metal. The new transplant, being composed of donor trachea turned into a collagen scaffold, is lined with stem cells taken from his bone marrow. Over the next month, these cells should specialize and manifest themselves into a working trachea.

Though the boy is the first child to undergo the procedure, the transplant itself is not the first of its kind. A woman in 2008 underwent the same procedure, but hers was only a segment of the windpipe. The boy’s in fact the first whole tissue engineered windpipe has been transplant. Stem cell organ treatment is still at the baby stages of actual use, but this operation has proven to a milestone for future endeavors. The donor windpipes were treated with a cocktail of chemicals to prompt the stem cells to grow into new tissue once implanted. The doctors involved believe they have pioneered a new technique that can be done cheaply and safely. The future of transplanting other organs such as the esophagus may depend on how well the boy’s organ develops and how well the body accepts it.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8576493.stm