Doctors have given a woman a new windpipe with tissue engineered from her own stem cells in what experts have hailed as a “milestone in medicine.”
Claudia Castillo, 30, suffered from tuberculosis for years.
The breakthrough allowed Claudia Castillo, 30, to receive a new section of trachea — an airway essential for breathing — without the risk that her body would reject the transplant.
Castillo was given the stem cell surgery, the controversial branch of medicine that some say could lead to human cloning, after suffering a severe lung collapse.
The condition, caused by long-term tuberculosis left Castillo, a Colombian now living in Barcelona, unable to carry out simple domestic duties or care for her two children.
The only conventional option was a major operation to remove her left lung, a risky procedure with a high mortality rate.
A team from the universities of Barcelona, Spain; Bristol, England; and Padua and Milan, Italy, decided instead to replace Castillo’s lower trachea and bronchial tube to her left lung with a lab-grown airway.
The operation, reported Wednesday in the British medical journal The Lancet, has been hailed as a major leap for medicine that could offer new hope for patients suffering from serious illness.
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