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First Synthetic Organ Transplant: Man's New Windpipe sets world record.

Stockholm, Sweden -- Surgeons from Karolinska University Hospital have carried out the world's first synthetic organ transplant, after scientists in London created an artificial windpipe which was then coated in stem cells from the patient. The procedure required the coordinated efforts of scientific teams in London, Massachusetts and Stockholm, Sweden, where the windpipe was surgically implanted. The artificial trachea was transplanted on June 9 in a 12-hour surgery led by Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, a pioneer in engineered trachea transplantation, at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. The patient appears to have accepted the new organ well, doctors said. The patient, Andemarian Telesenbet Beyene, a 36-year-old geology student from Eritrea, had been suffering from late-stage tracheal cancer. A rare, aggressive tumor was blocking his windpipe making it hard for him to breath. Diagnosed in 2008, Beyene had failed every conventional treatment including chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. He was running out of time, so rather than wait for a donor trachea for transplantation, his doctors suggested growing his own in the lab. The organ, implanted in a 36-year-old Icelandic man suffering from tracheal cancer, consisted of an artificial, trachea-shaped scaffold that had been lined with the patient's own stem cells. The cells take just a few days to grow around the scaffold, said the researchers from the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm.

(Posted on :Sunday, 11/09/2011 (05h:10 AM))