A mom in Spain is putting her tuberculosis struggles behind her, thanks to a new trachea grown from her own stem cells.
After a serious lung collapse, a team of surgeons from Spain, England and Italy replaced Claudia Castillo's lower trachea and bronchial tube with a lab-grown windpipe, CNN reported.
A donor trachea was stripped of the donor’s cells, and Castillo’s own stem cells went to work. The operation was reported Wednesday in the British medical journal The Lancet.
"Surgeons can now start to see and understand the very real potential for adult stem cells and tissue engineering to radically improve their ability to treat patients with serious diseases," said Martin Birchall, professor of surgery at the University of Bristol, who was part of the team that did the operation. "We believe this success has proved that we are on the verge of a new age in surgical care."
— Danielle Hohncke
