Woman given windpipe created in laboratory


In this undated photo released by the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, Claudia Castillo, 30, the recipient of a windpipe transplant which used tissue grown from her own stem cells, poses for a photograph in Barcelona, Spain. European doctors have performed a windpipe transplant with tissue grown from the patient's own stem cells, eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs.

Doctors have given a woman a new windpipe with tissue grown from her own stem cells, eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs. "This technique has great promise," said Dr. Eric Genden, who did a similar transplant in 2005 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. That operation used both donor and recipient tissue. Only a handful of windpipe, or trachea, transplants have ever been done.


If successful, the procedure could become a new standard of treatment, said Genden, who was not involved in the research.

The results were published online Wednesday in the medical journal, The Lancet.
The transplant was given to Claudia Castillo, a 30-year-old Colombian mother of two living in Barcelona, suffered from tuberculosis for years. After a severe collapse of her left lung in March, Castillo needed regular hospital visits to clear her airways and was unable to take care of her children. link

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