T
twilyth
Guest
OK, it's only a trachea, but hey, it's still a completely bio-engineered organ. Honestly, I'd rather be a cyborg, but I'll settle for having spare parts until that happens.
Scientists built a polymer scaffold exactly the same size and shape as the patient’s trachea and two primary bronchi, using 3D scans taken of the patient as a model.
Another group of scientists then seeded the artificial trachea with stem cells taken from the patient’s bone marrow. The cells were allowed to grow for two days, as researchers prodded them to differentiate into the various tissue types found in a healthy trachea.
Surgeons then removed the patient’s cancerous trachea and implanted the synthetic replica during a 12-hour operation.
Since the new trachea is built of the patient’s own cells, there was no risk he would reject the transplant—and thus no need for post-op immunosuppressant drugs.