The World's First Successfully Implanted Synthetic Larynx Component
Lab Grown Grafts Left: The Harvard Biosciences bioreactor in which the larynx--seen here with the synthetic scaffold coated in the patient's own cells--was grown. Right: The lab-grown trachea successfully transplanted last year. Courtesy Harvard Biosciences Inc./University College London In another leap forward for regenerative/transplant medicine, an international team of surgeons working in Russia have for the first time transplanted completely synthetic pieces of larynx into two patients in procedures that mark the first steps toward creating and transplanting an entire larynx from scratch. This graft is similar to but also very different from a previous operation that saw a whole lab-grown trachea transplanted into a patient--an operation carried out by the same surgical group that has now replaced a part of the larynx. In that trachea transplant the organ came from a donor but was washed of its native cells and loaded with the patient's own cells so the new organ...