The world's third trachea made of stem cells

In the UK, for the first time, a tracheal transplant operation was performed on a childABC magazine based on the materials of the BBC: Windpipe transplant success in UK child
A 10-year-old Briton became the first small patient to receive a tracheal skeleton transplant, with the child's own stem cells applied to it.

Doctors hope that using the boy's own tissues will avoid the risk of tissue rejection.

The world's first tissue-engineered trasnplant was made and transplanted in Spain in 2008, but it was noticeably shorter. The operation, which took place at the London Children's Hospital on Great Ormond Street, lasted 9 hours and became the third in the world, but the first performed on such a small patient.

The child was diagnosed with congenital tracheal stenosis, in which the trachea is so narrowed that the patient cannot breathe normally. In this case, the tracheal lumen was 1 mm. Earlier, the patient underwent an operation to expand the respiratory tract, but in November last year he developed complications from the erosion of a metal stent placed in the trachea.

This is the first time that an organ treated with stem cells has been transplanted to a child, while for the first time such a long section of the respiratory tract has been replaced, notes Professor Martin Birchall from University College London, who participated in the operation.

To create new airways, a donor trachea was used, purified to a collagen base, on which stem cells obtained from the bone marrow of a small patient were applied. (A video with computer animation of the technology used can be viewed on the website of University College London – VM.) Now doctors hope that over the next month stem cells will transform into specialized cells that form the inner and outer walls of the trachea.

The doctors who performed the operation are confident that their technique will allow for the transplantation of stem transplants not only in high-tech clinics, although of course additional clinical trials are needed. So far, there are a number of difficulties, in particular, consisting in the fact that too little time passes between the selection of stem cells and their implantation, so the technology cannot be called completely predictable.

The new technique is relatively inexpensive and has every chance of becoming an affordable operation for most patients. Now a team of doctors is thinking about a possible esophageal transplant using a similar technology.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru22.03.2010