Synthetic organs

摘要

Surgeons have successfully replaced the windpipe of a cancer patient with a wholly synthetic trachea -showing that donors may not be needed for tracheal transplants. The patient, Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene - a student of geology at the University of Iceland, Reykjavik -was discharged from the Karolinska University hospital in Stockholm on 9 July, a month after the transplant operation. Stem cells from his bone marrow were grown on a trachea-shaped scaffold of a nanocomposite material developed at University College London. See go.nature.com/zvuxed for more.