Spanish doctors in pioneering stem cell transplant surgery

Nov 19, 2008, 11:13 GMT

London - Doctors in Spain have carried out a pioneering tissue-engineered whole organ transplant by using a windpipe created with the patient's own stem cells, it was reported Wednesday.

Claudia Castillo, a 30-year-old Colombian woman, underwent the ground-breaking operation at a hospital in Barcelona in June and is now in perfect health, Britain's medical journal The Lancet reported.

British newspapers Wednesday hailed the achievement as a 'miracle' and a 'revolution.'

Scientists from Bristol University in Britain and experts from Italy were involved in the 'pan-European' project which could lead to the routine creation of tailor-made organs while cutting out the need for anti-rejection drugs, the Lancet said.

To make the new airway, the doctors took a donor windpipe, or trachea, from a patient who had recently died. They used strong chemicals and enzymes to wash away all of the cells from the donor trachea, leaving only a tissue scaffold made of the fibrous protein collagen.

This enabled them to repopulate the donated trachea with cells from Castillo's own bone marrow which was used in an operation to repair her damaged left bronchus - a branch of the windpipe.

After four days of growth in the laboratory in a special rotating bioreactor, the newly-coated donor windpipe was ready to be transplanted into the patient.

'I was very much afraid. Before this, we had been doing this work only on pigs,' said Professor Paolo Macchiarini of the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona, Spain, who performed the operation.

'We are terribly excited by these results,' he said, adding that the patient was 'enjoying a normal life.'

Professor Martin Birchall, professor of surgery at Bristol University, who helped grow the cells for the transplant, said the operation represented a huge step forward.

'Surgeons can now start to see and understand the potential for adult stem cells and tissue engineering to radically improve their ability to treat patients with serious diseases.'

He predicted that in 20 years time, virtually any transplant organ could be made in this way.

US scientists have already successfully implanted bladder patches grown in the laboratory from patients' own cells into people with bladder disease.

The European research team also included experts from the University of Padua and the Polytechnic of Milan in Italy.