Toddler Gets Windpipe Transplant Made From Her Stem Cells

Jim Carlson / OSF Saint Francis Medical Center / handout / AP

Darryl Warren and Lee Young-mi visit their 2-year-old daughter, Hannah Warren, in a post-op room at the Children's Hospital of Illinois in Peoria after having received a new windpipe in a landmark transplant operation on April 9, 2013.

Hannah Warren was born without a trachea but now has one made from plastic fibers and a stew of her own stem cells.

The 2-year-old Korean Canadian has spent every day of her life in intensive care, kept alive by a tube that substituted for the windpipe that was supposed to connect her mouth to her lungs. But nearly a month after her transplant, the toddler is mostly breathing on her own and is responding to doctors and nurses.

The surgery, pioneered by Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, director of the Advanced Center for Translational Regenerative Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, was only the sixth performed in the world, and Hannah was the youngest patient and first to receive the transplant in the U.S. The procedure was approved by theFDAas anexperimental operation for patients with very little hope of survival; being born without a trachea is fatal in 99% of cases.

(MORE: Stem-Cell Miracle? New Therapies May Cure Chronic Conditions Like Alzheimers)

Macchiarini performed the nine-hour operation on April 9 at the Childrens Hospital of Illinoisafter carefully creating the windpipe using stem cells from Hannahsbone marrow that were saturated over a matrix of plastic fibers shaped into a tube.

Exactly what happens to the windpipe after it is transplanted isnt clear, but researchers believe that placing stem cells, which are capable of developing into different types of body cells, can pick up signals from their environment and integrate with existing tissues. Macchiarini told the New York Times that the bodys regenerative capabilities may help such bioengineered organs to integrate with existing tissues. Children may make the ideal patients for these procedures since they have natural and active abilities to heal and grow.Hannahs transplant has completely changed my thinking about regenerative medicine, he told the Times, adding that he wants to conduct a clinical trial in the U.S.

According to the Associated Press, only about 1 in 50,000 children worldwide are born with a windpipe defect or without one. For these patients, and for others with defective or diseased organs, manipulating stem cells to generate healthy tissues or organs could be their only chance at survival.

(MORE: Cancer PatientReceivesa Man-Made Windpipe)

View post:
Toddler Gets Windpipe Transplant Made From Her Stem Cells