A 30 year old Colombian woman, Claudia Castillo, is in perfect health after receiving a new windpipe made from her own stem cells in a groundbreaking operation.
The operation was the world’s first tissue-engineered whole organ transplant and was carried out in Barcelona by Italian surgeon Professor Paolo Macchiarini.
Claudia Castillo, a mother of two, was suffering from lung damage as a result of tuberculosis. Basically, a donor trachea was stripped of donor cells, repopulated with stem cells from the patient and a new windpipe was created.
The advantage of this approach is that the patient’s body is, in effect, tricked into believing that the new organ actually belongs there, negating the need for immune-suppression drugs and almost eliminating the chance of rejection.
Until this pioneering operation, this type of work had only previously been carried out on pigs. The operation was carried out in June, and doctors say that the chance of rejection is now virtually zero.
It is widely believed that within 20 years, virtually any transplant organ could be made this way.