Scientist transplants organs into much needed patients
An illustrious surgeon carves his name into the world by taking hazards with his patients. Dr. Paolo Macchiarini of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, is exceeding the limit of the emerging field of developing medicine. This implicates using the cells of a patient in order to repair tissues and organs. The medical world are aiming for a time where any limb or factor of the body, whether it be a limb or organ, can be supplied in a lab, man-made. This would defeat the purpose of a donor, which are limited as it is.
The only hope patients have is this contentious surgeon, who is the only one in the world performing transplants in humans with artificially grown organs.
An Irish boy, named Ciaran Finn-Lynch, who was born with a windpipe less than a tenth of an inch wide. He went through a transplant used by his own stem cells as well as a donor organ. He was the first child in the world to have experienced this.Another child named Hannah Warren was born without a trachea and was unable to breathe on her own. She had spent her entire life depending on a tube while in the hospital. Her only option and chance left was Dr. Macchiarini’s artificial trachea. No other child with her disorder has lived past the age of six.A Russian dancer, named Julia Tuulik, had her trachea destroyed after a car accident.“They offered for me this one chance,” Tuulik told Meredith Vieira for NBC News’ “A Leap of Faith: A Meredith Vieira Special,” airing Friday at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT. “And I haven’t other chance in my life.”“You see a patient and this patient has no other alternatives,” Macchiarini affirmed. “And he will die very, very soon. As a human and as a doctor are we allowed to say no? I don’t think so.”
Scientist around the world are currently experimenting unthinkable projects. New achievements consist of lab-grown vaginas that were implanted into four teenage girls, as announced by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. Scientist from the University of Basel in Switzerland grew the nose tissue of adults who had lost portion of their original nose due to skin cancer
As Scientist continue to build human organs such as the heart, and lungs it will take more than just a few years for the process of the actual transplanting to happen.
In 2008, the world’s first lab-made windpipe was transplanted by Dr. Macchiarini. This included elements from a donor trachea that had been stripped of its original cells. It was left as a skeleton so the new trachea could form, acquiring the patient’s own stem cells. Macchiarini bypassed two major problems connecting with donated organs, the risk of rejection and the requirement to take powerful anti-rejection drugs, by using this new method.
The prominent surgeon, in 2011, moved on to plastic as a scaffold instead of a donated trachea. Andermariam Beyene, a 36-year old engineer from Eritrea was the first beneficiary.
Beyene’s bone marow was collected by Macchiarini’s team. Special growth factors was combined with those cells and then poured onto a scaffold made from plastic. It is also the same plastic that used to make soda bottles and had been made to copy the shape of an actual windpipe.
Within a few days, the scaffold started to transform into a real windpipe that functioned. “It’s like if you roast a chicken. It’s the same thing. You fill this box with fluid that includes cells. And then this chicken scaffold just is submerged in this fluid and the cells penetrate inside”, Macchiarini described. Macchiarini’s artificial, bio-engineered tracheas have been received by eight patients in a row. Critics are concerned that his patients are at risk.
Claudia Castillo, a Spanish mother, is one of Macchiarini’s most brilliant success stories. She is doing extremely well six years after her transplant. Colleagues of Macchiarini are started to see him in a different way.“I believe, for the field, we are now at the end of the beginning,” Vacanti added. “And so, he may feel alone, but he is not alone. He’s part of the group that’s making fantasy real.”
