While it will be years until complex organs made in the lab are ready for the clinic (see main story), even simpler structures such as windpipes have been difficult to perfect. The first person to receive a regenerated windpipe was Claudia Castillo in 2008. She is fine, but other recipients have fared badly, and one of the pioneers of the field, Paolo Macchiarini of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, has recently been judged guilty of scientific misconduct in relation to six papers published on the technique. Two of Macchiarini's patients given a biosynthetic windpipe have died, and a third is in intensive care. The first a 36-year-old Eritrean man, was treated in 2011, as reported at the time in New Scientist, but died 30 months later.
展开▼
