AN INTERNATIONAL team has successfully carried out the world's first airway transplant on a young Spanish woman using an organ partly grown from her own stem cells, in a ground-breaking operation which scientists believe will transform the future of surgery.
Surgeons in Barcelona replaced a section of Claudia Castillo's windpipe, that had been irreparably damaged by tuberculosis, with a donated organ that was stripped of its cells and used as a scaffold for her own stem cells.
Because Ms Castillo's body recognises her own cells in the replacement organ, she does not need to take powerful drugs to suppress her immune system, unlike other transplant patients. The technique raises transplant prospects for patients whose organs are damaged by cancer, and who cannot take immunosuppressant drugs as they increase the risk of cancer returning.
Prof Martin Birchall, from Bristol University, which carried out the stem cell engineering, said it would soon be possible to create a range of organs for transplant that patients' bodies will not reject. "In 20 years, this will be the most common form of surgery," he said.
A paper in the online Lancet medical journal yesterday described the cutting-edge collaboration on the transplant involving doctors from Spain, the UK and Italy.
The authors wrote: "We think this represents a milestone and hope it will unlock the door for a safe and recipient-tailored transplantation of the airway in adults and children. We hope that these future patients will no longer suffer the trauma of speech loss, severe shortness of breath and limited social activities."
Doctors rarely recommend a windpipe transplant because condemning patients to a lifetime of immunosuppressant drugs - which makes them vulnerable to infections - is only thought worthwhile if it is the only way to save their lives.