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In 2008, a woman in Italy with a windpipe ravaged by tuberculosis received a windpipe transplant. A donor windpipe was stripped of all cells, leaving just the cartilaginous framework, then the woman’s own stem cells were introduced to produce a complete windpipe.

The transplant was a success.

Then, in 2010, a child with a congenitally narrowed windpipe had the donor cartilage transplanted into his body along with a cocktail of growth factors plus his own stem cells. When it had grown, the new windpipe was swapped for the old one – and the child, at last, could breath properly.

Synthetic Windpipe

Now, in a further development, the donor is no longer needed. A completely synthetic windpipe has been grown at University College, London, exactly the same shape and size as a patient’s own, and seeded with stem cells. The whole growth process took around a week. The completely synthetic windpipe was then transplanted into the patient.

Being synthetic, no donor is needed and so the risk of rejection – a big problem with donor transplants – is zero. Because of this rejection problem a patient with a donated organ has to have their immune system heavily suppressed, increasing the chance of an life-threatening infection taking hold. In other words, with a synthetic transplant plus their own stem cells, patients will simply live longer.

A Massive Medical Breakthrough

This is a huge breakthrough. It is now only a matter of time before a large number of body parts will be able to be produced on request.

Does this seem just a little grotesque? In a sense, perhaps. But if you needed a replacement organ in a hurry I know most of us would be pleased one could be made this way.

Related articles

• Man Gets Windpipe Made From Stem Cells (abcnews.go.com)
• First transplant of a fully synthetic organ carried out (telegraph.co.uk)

Incredible! The First Synthetic Windpipe is a post from: Living To 150

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A great step forward (if you can have one of those in nanotechnology) has been made in molecular machinery. A cog has been made out of atoms, and rotated clockwise and anti-clockwise.

This was created by fixing a ‘stick’ like molecule onto the sides of a benzene ring, resulting in a 6-spoked cog. This was then rotated around the molecular fold occurring on a piece of gold.

This is a huge step forward, and an essential step, for molecular machines.

Now the method has been proved, more complex machines will be developed, enabling energy to be converted into work at the molecular level very efficiently.

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Nanotech Rotor Created is a post from: Living To 150

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