2-year-old gets trachea grown from stem cells

[Baitball Blogger]

CHICAGO — A 2-year-old girl born without a windpipe now has a new one grown from her own stem cells, the youngest patient in the world to benefit from the experimental treatment.

Hannah Warren has been unable to breathe, eat, drink or swallow on her own since she was born in South Korea in 2010. Until the operation at a central Illinois hospital, she had spent her entire life in a hospital in Seoul. Doctors there told her parents there was no hope and they expected her to die.

The stem cells came from Hannah's bone marrow, extracted with a special needle inserted into her hip bone. They were seeded in a lab onto a plastic scaffold, where it took less than a week for them to multiply and create a new windpipe.

About the size of a 3-inch tube of penne pasta, it was implanted April 9 in a nine-hour procedure

http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2013/04/30/news/doc517fed45950b3080483263.txt

[Orrex]

1. Amazing story!

k/r

[Arugula Latte]

2. Science for the win!

[datasuspect]

3. isn't stuff like that of the devil?

[progressoid]

4. Yep`

Those parents better keep an eye out for satanic urges in that girl.

Kidding aside. This is pretty damn cool.

[justiceischeap]

5. Until it's the child of those that truly believe that is concerned

Then they better get to sticking that needle in the hip and growing a petri lung or trachea or heart or...

[YarnAddict]

11. According to the article,

This was grown from her own stem cells--no embryos involved. No one is against that

This is so cool--since, it is from her own cells, there is no possibility of rejection or any other side effects.

[johniewalker85]

6. sweettt

that is just so sweet I am very glad for the girl.. It seems that Dr. Paolo Macchiarini's has saved many lives by creating windpipes:
http://www.stemcellsfreak.com/2013/02/growing-organs-from-stem-cells.html

Hopefully, he will be able to create a heart soon !

[hrmjustin]

7. Welcome to DU my friend!

[RadiationTherapy]

8. My brother needs this. His was destroyed by radiation therapy for cancer.

I hope he can breathe/speak normally again someday.

[Baitball Blogger]

9. That would be a wonderful application of this new science.

[JNelson6563]

10. Yay science!