LONDON - BRITISH and Italian doctors have carried out groundbreaking surgery to rebuild the windpipe of a 10-year-old British boy using stem cells developed within his own body, they said.
In an operation on Monday lasting nearly nine hours, doctors at a London hospital implanted the boy with a donor trachea, or windpipe, that had been stripped of its cells and injected with his own.
Over the next month, doctors expect the boy's bone marrow stem cells to begin transforming themselves within his body into tracheal cells - a process that, if successful, could lead to a revolution in regenerative medicine.
The new organ should not be rejected by the boy's immune system, a risk in traditional transplants, because the cells are derived from his own tissue.
'This procedure is different in a number of ways, and we believe it's a real milestone,' said Professor Martin Birchall, head of translational regenerative medicine at University College London.
'It is the first time a child has received stem cell organ treatment, and it's the longest airway that has ever been replaced.' More clinical trials were needed to demonstrate that the process worked, he said, but if it did, it could lead to other organs such as the larynx or oesophagus being transplanted in hospitals around the world. -- AFP
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