Nose on hand
A new nose for a Briton will grow on his hand
According to the head of the experiment, Professor Alex Seifalian, the new organ will look the same as the old one, reports the Daily Mail (Cancer victim who lost his nose to disease is growing a new one in his ARM for surgeons to sew back in place).
The patient, a 56–year-old British businessman, lost his sense of smell as a result of the disease. Because of the developed skin cancer, doctors were forced to remove the entrepreneur's nose. After the operation, the man almost does not leave the house.
Professor Seifalian, who hopes to be able to grow a whole face in the laboratory in the future, undertook to help the businessman. According to the doctor, the new organ will be identical to the one that the patient "wore" before the illness.
To begin with, the doctors made a "cast" of the man's nose out of glass. Then they applied a layer of material on the glass mold, the structure of which resembles a honeycomb – this substance formed a frame. In it, scientists "settled" the patient's stem cells, after which the glass nose was carefully removed, and the frame with stem cells was placed in a special reactor for a month. During incubation in the reactor, cartilage tissue grew from stem cells.
At this time, the doctors, using a small balloon placed under the skin, stretched a section of the skin on the patient's arm. Two months ago, the place of the balloon was taken by a "grown-up" frame in the reactor. Now, for another 30 days, the new nose will be on the Briton's hand, where it will acquire the necessary nerve endings and blood vessels, as well as be covered with the epidermis. "We can already grow a nose, but we can't grow skin on it yet," Professor Seifalian commented on this stage of the experiment.
After the required amount of time, the new organ will be cut out of the patient's hand and sewn into its rightful place. According to doctors, not a single scar will remain on the man's face after the transplant operation. In this case, the patient will be able to regain his sense of smell, and the skin on his hand will simply be sewn.
If this experiment ends successfully, doctors will be able to grow noses for victims of car accidents and soldiers injured in battles, Seifalian hopes.
Recently, at the Johns Hopkins University Clinic (Baltimore, Maryland, USA), an auricle – VM was grown and transplanted according to the same technique.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru23.01.2013