In Barcelona a medical first occurred when Dr. Paolo
Macchiarini transplanted a new windpipe in Claudia Castillo who had serve
tuberculosis, and could not even walk without shortness of breath. The transplant was done using a donor
windpipe and Castillo’s stem cells from her bone marrow. Castillo says she is filling fine and is
doing what she loves. This surgery isn’t
only remarkable because it is the first ever windpipe transplant, but because they
used stem cells to grow the new windpipe and because they used Castillo’s cells
she won’t have to take immunosuppressive drugs.
This surgery is a major step forward in the use of stem cells, and if it
works there will be no wait list for organs.
http://www.ivanhoe.com/science/by_subject/biology.html
NOS Theme(s):
1. Role
of motivation and curiosity
This was a very interesting article. I was wondering why Claudia Castillo needed a donor windpipe even though they grew her one using her stem cells. I found another article about her, and it said that they removed the donor's cells from the windpipe which left only structural tissues, then they replaced all of the donor's cells with Claudia's cells.
ReplyDeleteLink: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16072-woman-receives-windpipe-built-from-her-stem-cells.html