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Spanish Surgeon Performs First Synthetic Organ Transplant

Posted by timothy on from the bet-they're-delicious dept.

Bob the Super Hamste writes "The BBC is reporting that surgeons in Sweden have transplanted a synthetic windpipe into a patient. The synthetic windpipe was grown from a scaffolding and coated with the patients own stem cells. The scaffolding was made using 3D images of the patient's own windpipe. The new windpipe was made by scientists in London."

66 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Big Deal by zedmelon · · Score: 1

    Fergie has had an artificial windpipe for years...

    --
    Mom says my .sig can beat up your .sig.
    1. Re:Big Deal by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 1

      I doubt that is the only artificial thing she has.

      --
      Time to offend someone
    2. Re:Big Deal by ISoldat53 · · Score: 1

      My Grandmother has a cedar chest.

    3. Re:Big Deal by countertrolling · · Score: 1

      What knockers!

      Oh, thank you, doctor...

      --
      For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
  2. Not the first by 5 years by toppavak · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Anthony Atala's group, now at Wake Forest University, have grown implanted bladders grown in the same fashion. In fact, it was Atala's group that was one of the leading pioneers of the technique (I believe Robert Langer's group at MIT also had done some seminal work in this area). http://articles.cnn.com/2006-04-03/health/engineered.organs_1_bladder-cells-spina-bifida?_s=PM:HEALTH

    1. Re:Not the first by 5 years by jhoegl · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that is what I was thinking. But it IS the first windpipe is it not?

      The biggest thing to note about growing these "artificial" parts is that if the organ being replaced has a complex vain system, you cannot grow or replace it.
      Hopefully this will be resolved in the future so we can live to 150.

    2. Re:Not the first by 5 years by h4rr4r · · Score: 1

      Why is vanity an issue? Are these synthetic organs less ascetically pleasing?

      I would be more worried about the circulatory system of such organs.

    3. Re:Not the first by 5 years by toppavak · · Score: 1

      Actually it is possible to produce highly vascularized tissue. The trick is to use the decellularized collagen matrix from a donor organ (either taken from an animal or from a cadaver) which can then be re-seeded with the patient's own cells and implanted. Atala's group has done this with livers (although not re-implanted yet) and has made proof-of-concepts with kidneys (by using a stack of 2d tissues rather than attempting to engineer the complete 3d structure)

    4. Re:Not the first by 5 years by corran__horn · · Score: 1

      The difference in this case is the use of stem cells to replace known bad cells. The Atala group used differentiated cells, which is of more limited use when dealing with potentially cancerous organ tissues.

      --

      If people can connect to one another even the smallest of voices will grow loud.
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    5. Re:Not the first by 5 years by IronicToo · · Score: 1

      If you RTFA, second sentence: "The surgery marks the first time a trachea grown from a patient’s stem cells and seeded onto a synthetic, rather than a donor, structure has been transplanted in a human." and the fifth sentence: "We talked to Dr. Anthony Atala, a pioneer in the field who in 1999 transplanted the first of several synthetic bladders into young people with bladder disease."

    6. Re:Not the first by 5 years by IronicToo · · Score: 1

      Ok, I messed that up. The above quotes were from here: http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-trachea-transplant-stem-cell-20110708,0,2121263.story I had too many of the same story open at the same time. I do recommend the above story for more info on how the fits in with previous work.

  3. Re:Well thats a... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Well that's a ... <dons sunglasses> ... breath of fresh air. Yeeeaaaah. FTFY

  4. Huge by Telvin_3d · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As I write this, the only comments posted so far are the usual sarcastic quips. But this is huge. Beyond huge.

    For the first time, an artificially produced cloned organ has been created and transplanted. Someone has received an organ that has zero chance of rejection and will heal to a completely natural state.

    I give it less than a decade before more complex organs like hearts or kidneys are transplanted for the first time.

    1. Re:Huge by Aladrin · · Score: 1

      I suppose all those clone movies were for nothing, then. Not much point in raising a full clone when you can just grow the part you need at will.

      Of course, this won't help for emergencies, but if someone has the time to spare, this is a much better option than a donated organ.

      --
      "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
    2. Re:Huge by xMrFishx · · Score: 1

      Yeah this is massive. I remember watching a Horizon (BBC) episode on growing hearts from scaffold and stem-cell and having them function. It was beyond amazing. This is exactly where the money needs to go. Growing organs, if it beats graft-vs-host is one of the biggest potential ways forward.

    3. Re:Huge by demonlapin · · Score: 1

      It's not really a cloned organ. It's a stem-cell-coated scaffolding of one of the body's least metabolically active tissues. It's a lot closer to a rod in your leg than to a functioning heart.

    4. Re:Huge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Emergencies" is open-ended. The patient in TFA had a relatively slow but still dire emergency, and he was helped in a timeframe doctors would consider "lightning speed" - growing a heretofore irreplaceable part in two weeks.

      How many people could be treated if a new irreplaceble organ of their own tissue could be made for them in, say, one month's time? The benefits would almost outstrip the imagination.

    5. Re:Huge by countertrolling · · Score: 1

      But this is huge. Beyond huge.

      If you're talking about the costs to the patient, sure. I doubt it will be covered by medicaid...

      --
      For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
    6. Re:Huge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I give it less than a decade before more complex organs like hearts or kidneys are transplanted for the first time.

      Ummm... we've been transplanting hearts and kidneys for decades...

      Correct terminology IMO would be implanted. If you transplant a tree you dig it up and move from one spot in the ground to another. The windpipe didn't come from another body it came from the labratory.

    7. Re:Huge by geekoid · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually it might.
      They can build the structure ahead of time, and then when needed put your cells onto the stricture.

      I suspect there will be a time when you can have your critical organ on 'standby'. At my age, I would love to hae a second heart ready to replace my older one. I read a paper where they where discussing the possible of creating a heart this way, and then having it put inside you along with your other heart to take over.

      It was high level musing..but high level musing by people that know all the details.

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    8. Re:Huge by geekoid · · Score: 1

      It's huge fro a rejection stand point, the after organ transplant procedure is pretty nasty. All that would go away.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    9. Re:Huge by Mister+Whirly · · Score: 1

      Yes because somehow magically in other countries, citizens don't foot the bill for socialized medicine. If you really think Swedes "don't have to pay for" their health care, you are being seriously naive. Not getting a direct bill for something is not the same thing as not ever paying for it indirectly.

      --
      "But this one goes to 11!"
    10. Re:Huge by Telvin_3d · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yeah, but it's a much smaller bill. Turns out that any level of 'government inefficiency' is a drop in the bucket beside the waste of having every company involved take its 50% off the top, plus executive salaries, plus lack of preventative medicine because that is an 'expense'.

      Here is an excellent graphic from National Geographic comparing spending to life expectancy. Despite having worse outcomes than almost every nation on the chart, the US is spending so much more that they had to be placed outside the graph. In fact, most industrialized nations are spending less than half as much as the US for better outcomes. The only countries with worse outcomes are spending less than a quarter as much per person as the US does.

      So while the citizens as the United States of America may not be able to afford it, I suspect the rest of the world will do just fine.

      And that assumes that this causes a net rise in health costs. My guess is that, when all is said and done, replacing damaged organs will prove much cheaper than long term treatment and complications do now.

    11. Re:Huge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      I suspect there will be a time when you can have your critical organ on 'standby'.

      Well, I realize you're a bit older, but I, for one, always have my critical organ on standby.

    12. Re:Huge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I give it less than a decade before more complex organs like hearts or kidneys are transplanted for the first time.

      Too bad it will take until the year 2368 before bodyparts like the spinal column... (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Worf#Ailments_and_injuries http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Toby_Russell)

    13. Re:Huge by Amouth · · Score: 1

      that is an awesome chart - thanks.

      --
      '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
    14. Re:Huge by camperdave · · Score: 2

      For the first time, an artificially produced cloned organ has been created and transplanted.

      No. They've been doing this with cloned bladders for close to a decade. The only new aspect to this is that they created the scaffold from 3D scans of the patient's own organ.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    15. Re:Huge by demonlapin · · Score: 1

      The body doesn't reject titanium, either. I'm not saying this isn't a great thing - it is. But this is grown on a glass scaffolding, which could still serve as a nidus for infection, and it doesn't get us closer to real artificial organs.

    16. Re:Huge by tarius8105 · · Score: 1

      Yes but there are other applications that this would be better suited. You could grow new arteries for bypass patients, instead of having to harvest from other parts of the body. That alone would allow people with clogged arteries the ability to be able to do strenuous activity. Eventually they will be able to do more complex but this is a huge milestone.

    17. Re:Huge by t2t10 · · Score: 1

      Actually, the US has better outcomes for medical care than other nations; lower life expectancy is due to more obesity and heart disease, plus some other factors. Insufficient preventive medicine isn't due to cost or lack of coverage either for most people, it's a choice for most people (a stupid one but still a choice).

      And the rest of the world isn't "doing just fine". Most countries in the world can't even spend close to what either the US or Europe are spending.

      And long term, people are deeply concerned about spiraling health care costs and health care insolvency in Europe as well, with nobody having a good solution. The US is just ahead of the curve.

    18. Re:Huge by EdZ · · Score: 1

      And we hadn't even got to the stage of harvesting organs from criminals yet. Take that, Niven!

    19. Re:Huge by demonlapin · · Score: 1

      Coronary grafts would be especially bad for this, as glass (which is used for the scaffold) has properties that render it highly unsuitable for use as an arterial graft. Arteries are muscular vessels and depend on the elasticity this grants to provide smooth delivery of blood rather than jackhammering it into distal vessels. You'll need a non-rejected elastic substrate that can handle systemic arterial pressures for ten years just to match the statistical performance of vein grafts.

    20. Re:Huge by Confusador · · Score: 1

      How sad is it that I see this huge advancement and think, "Boy, that sounds expensive." *sigh* Such is life in modern America.

    21. Re:Huge by IrquiM · · Score: 1

      Dude - China!

      --
      This is blinging
    22. Re:Huge by lsatenstein · · Score: 1

      Will I and my family be able to live perpetually? Is there going to be a way to take my 70+ year brain and revitalize the short-term (scratchpad) memory.

      --
      Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
  5. Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wouldn't that be an "implant"? I mean, they're not taking it from someone else, are they..?

    1. Re:Hmmm... by taiwanjohn · · Score: 1

      Good point. I think the reasoning is that it's a replacement of an existing organ, whereas an "implant" would be something added to the original.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
    2. Re:Hmmm... by camperdave · · Score: 1

      They're taking cells from his nose, and putting them into his neck. Sounds like a transplant to me.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    3. Re:Hmmm... by layer3switch · · Score: 1

      and 3D image of African patient's windpipe...

      --
      "Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
  6. Re:Well, thats nothing by logjon · · Score: 1

    goatse

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  7. Re:Well, thats nothing by Daetrin · · Score: 1

    The usual connotation (though not denotation) of "synthetic" is "an artificially made substance/thing that closely mimics a natural occurring substance/thing." Thus synthetic fiber, synthetic oil, and now synthetic organs.

    I can't think of what the technical term would be for the things you're citing (cybernetic implants?) but that's not what's being discussed here. One is trying to restore lost functionality by duplicating lost or damaged parts of the body and the other is trying to add entirely new functionality by adding bits that never existed before.

    --
    This Space Intentionally Left Blank
  8. Re:Spanish surgeon? by demonlapin · · Score: 3, Informative

    Professor Paolo Macchiarini from Spain led the pioneering surgery

    the 36-year-old African patient, Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene

    Did you?

  9. Windpipe? by Mikkeles · · Score: 1

    So, is it a Wurlitzer?

    --
    Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
  10. Building on the work of others by djlemma · · Score: 1

    This story seemed like a dupe of this one from last year:
    Child Receives Trachea Grown From Own Stem Cells
    But it seems that instead of taking a donor trachea and using it for the "scaffold," they built their own, no donor at all.. Pretty amazing.

    1. Re:Building on the work of others by luca · · Score: 1

      Actually it was the same doctor.

  11. Maybe. by MrEricSir · · Score: 1

    Don't get me wrong, being able to build new organs and implant them is great.

    But that doesn't mean the new organs will last, or work perfectly. We need to check back in a few years to see how the patient did.

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    1. Re:Maybe. by sjames · · Score: 2

      There are plenty of concerns, but given the alternative was death, it's not at all a bad risk. Even if the organs did turn out not to last long, they would at least be a good bridge to transplant.

  12. Re:THREE YEARS OLD by tom17 · · Score: 1

    The one three years used a donor trachea - they washed away the donor cells leaving just the scaffold.

    With this one, the scaffold was created artificially from a 3D model of the patients original one.

    Similar, but quite a big difference, though the difference is only in the scaffold.

  13. Re:Spanish surgeon? by jittles · · Score: 3, Informative

    A Spanish surgeon in a Swedish facility with a British organ for an African patient. Now that is Globalization!

  14. Define "synthetic" by LionMage · · Score: 1

    Someone already brought up the artificially grown bladder, which was covered earlier this year, so this surgery already seems dubious as a "first synthetic organ" transplant. The BBC article title says first synthetic windpipe, but the subtitle says first synthetic organ. I call shenanigans (and suspect a bit of nationalism at work).

    However, what about the Jarvik artificial hearts? Those were developed and transplanted years ago. Don't those qualify as synthetic organs, since they are artificial yet perform a similar function to a real heart?

  15. Implant, not transplant by WebManWalking · · Score: 1

    Transplants come from someone else.

    1. Re:Implant, not transplant by sourcerror · · Score: 1

      If it doesn't make your boobs bigger, it's a transplant.

    2. Re:Implant, not transplant by sjames · · Score: 1

      Technically, it's a replant.

  16. Spanish surgeon? holy crap! by greywire · · Score: 1

    You are all missing the important point here, as illustrated in the title of this article.

    A *spanish* surgeon did this.

    I mean, it is the first word and all.

    --
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  17. Other more important words by curio_city · · Score: 1
    The Jarvik hearts are not custom-printed to be structurally identical to the patient's, but we can call them synthetic organs. The artificially grown bladders are made from the patient's (already differentiated) cells, but they are not custom printed either (they're bladders, they don't need to be).

    These windpipes are both custom printed to match the structure of the patient's original windpipe, and are made with the patient's stem cells.

    Synthetic is not the most salient descriptor, but none of the other factors make this a distinct first.

  18. Re:Spanish surgeon? holy crap! by Veritech_Ace · · Score: 1

    Yeah, my first reaction to the headline was "Who gives a shit where the surgeon was born?". I have to wonder how this fact, insignificant with respect to the rest of the story, was promoted to the title. "World Ends Today, Starting With Spain" - who cares where it starts?

  19. Re:Impossible by camperdave · · Score: 1

    The Mayo Clinic... Isn't that the quality control lab at Hellmans?

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  20. I think it was an Italian surgeon. by surveyork · · Score: 1

    I did read TFA:

    "Professor Paolo Macchiarini from Italy led the pioneering surgery, which took place at the Karolinska University Hospital."

    The only reference to Spain I saw:

    "Professor Macchiarini already has 10 other windpipe transplants under his belt - most notably the world's first tissue-engineered tracheal transplant in 2008 on 30-year-old Spanish woman Claudia Costillo"

    Not to diminish Spanish doctors, just pointing out what I think is an error in the title.

    --
    2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
  21. It seems he's actually Italian by luca · · Score: 1

    Now it says "Professor Paolo Macchiarini from Italy". According to wikipedia he's Italian but he works in Barcelona, hence the confusion.

  22. Re:Waiting for my vagina... by surveyork · · Score: 1

    I've sometimes wondered about this possibility too. I'm no transgender, but I'm human and can empathize with their plight (if not completely understand what they feel). No more need for surgical "hacks" to try to mend nature. This opens the possibility of a streamlined "patch/tweak/upgrade" :) I hope you get your own vagina as soon as possible! Also, I hope more complex organs can be made soon too. This thought is purely egotistical: you never know when you'll get a cancer or lose a limb.

    --
    2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
  23. Spanish or Sweedish or Italian by gubers33 · · Score: 1

    The title of the Slashdot article says Spanish, then in the article is says Swedish then if you click on the actual link it is an Italian professor. I just want some clarification here since it is stating so many different nationalities I want to know who did it so I can get mine.

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  24. Re:Waiting for my vagina... by godel_56 · · Score: 1

    This kind of news is absolutely huge for a TG girl. In a few years time, it might become possible to get a complete vagina/womb/ovaries set even if you were not born a genetic female. Totally awesome...

    Vagina/womb perhaps, but ovaries are a big ask. You should have saved some sperm for later if you wanted children that were genetically your own.

  25. Re:Spanish surgeon? by Scott+Scott · · Score: 1

    No, the cheap knockoffs will be from India too.

  26. And not a Spaniard was to seen... by Dean+Edmonds · · Score: 1

    Italian surgeon. African patient (studying in Iceland). English technology. Operation took place in Sweden.

    I guess the poster of the article can be given for the error in the subject line. With such an international cast it's hard to believe that a Spaniard wasn't involved *somewhere*.

    --

    -deane

  27. Re:Spanish surgeon? by Zaatxe · · Score: 1

    A Spanish surgeon in a Swedish facility with a British organ for an African patient. Now that is Globalization!

    You forgot to mention that the spanish surgeon has a obvious italian name...

    --
    So say we all
  28. Awesome by hesaigo999ca · · Score: 1

    Hopefully the technique used to grow the windpipe will be useable by other organs too, for those replacements...and be free of anti rejection drugs as a whole!