First child in the world to undergo the breakthrough procedure to transplant his trachea with one grown from his own stem cells.

I was very intrigued by this article because of the breakthrough technique to use the patient's own stem cells to coat the donor windpipe and then transplanting it into the recipient. This eliminates the need for anti-rejection drugs and the associated complications and it is hoped the technique will eventually replace almost all transplant surgery.

Ciaran Finn-Lynch pictured with his parents Colleen and Paul Photo: PA

First child to have 'miracle' operation leaves hospital

An 11-year-old British boy who came close to death after being born with a windpipe just one millimeter wide is now able to breathe normally again following pioneering surgery doctors have described as a 'kind of miracle'.

By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor, Telegraph.co.uk

Ciaran Finn-Lynch became the first child in the world to undergo the breakthrough procedure to transplant his trachea with one grown from his own stem cells.

He had been born with a windpipe just one millimeter wide and went through repeated surgery from a young age.

Although he managed well with a series of metal devices to hold his trachea open, they repeatedly burrowed into a major blood vessel causing 'massive bleeding'.

Speaking for the first time about her son's ordeal yesterday, Ciaran's mother Colleen told how she thought she had lost him. But now, four months after the operation, she said she had been 'given her boy back'.

The technique involved taking a windpipe from a dead donor and stripping it of its living tissue, before squirting the leftover scaffold with stem cells taken from Ciaran's bone marrow.

The trachea was then transplanted into his throat almost immediately where the stem cells have grown into normal tissue to cover the scaffold and provide a new windpipe. While the tissue was growing, his windpipe was supported by a temporary scaffold which will dissolve naturally.

The technique avoids complications associated with straight transplantation when the body can often reject donor organs without powerful drugs to keep the recipient's immune system in check.

As the trachea transplanted in Ciaran is covered with tissue that has grown from his own cells, his body will not reject it and he does not need any anti-rejection drugs.

A similar operation was carried out in Barcelona, Spain, two years earlier but in that operation that stem cells were grown on the windpipe scaffold in the laboratory and it was only transplanted four months later.

Speaking yesterday as her family prepared to leave Great Ormond Street Hospital in London for their home in Northern Ireland, Ciaran's mother said they were not daunted by their son being the first child to undergo such a procedure.

She said: "We didn't have much choice when it came to the operation.

"If Ciaran had one more bleed I don't think he would have made it."

She said they had "100 per cent faith" in the transplant team, led by Great Ormond Street's Professor Martin Elliott.

"When they initially suggested the procedure we agreed to it, knowing it would be the first time it had been tried in a child, as we have 100% faith in them and the work they do.

She said Ciaran's recovery had been "up and down" but he kept his spirits up.

"Because it's so new, nobody knows what's ahead, or how long his full recovery is going to be, but we are on the right road now," she said.

"We're just so grateful, we are delighted they gave Ciaran a chance, we've got our boy back."

Ciaran, who turned 11 last month, is looking forward to going home and is likely to return to school in September.

A keen drummer, he is most excited about being able to play in his band again, and even started practising with a lesson in the hospital's intensive care unit recently.

The donor was found for Ciaran four months before his operation, from a 30-year-old Italian woman.

Colleen said: “We are obviously also incredibly grateful and indebted to Ciaran’s donor and are aware of the heartbreak that family went through in losing someone.

"They have displayed courage and selflessness and we would like to use this opportunity to urge people to think about signing up to the organ donor register.”

It is hoped the technique will eventually replace almost all transplant surgery.

Prof Martin Elliott, director of the tracheal service at Great Ormond Street, said 'enormous numbers' of patients could benefit from this technique in future. In many types of surgery pieces of tissue from animals or plastic substitutes are used but that could all be replaced with the patient's own stem cells.

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Windpipe transplant renews Belgian's life

This bodes very well for the future as the prospect of using tissue regeneration techniques to grow new organs or parts of organs becomes closer to reality. What really gets my attention is the prospect of someday not having to take anti-rejection drugs.

'Life before my transplant was becoming less livable all the time, with continual pain, and jabbing, and pricking in my throat and windpipe,' Linda De Croock says. (Courtesy Linda De Croock via Dr. Pierre Delaere/Associated Press)

CBC News

A Belgian woman has a working windpipe after surgeons implanted the trachea from a dead man into her arm, where it grew new blood vessels before being transplanted into her throat.

For more than 2½ years, Linda De Croock lived with constant pain from a car accident that smashed her windpipe.

The way doctors trained her body to accept donor tissue could yield new methods of growing or nurturing organs within patients, experts say.

The technique sounds like science fiction, but De Croock says it has transformed her life. She no longer takes anti-rejection drugs.

"Life before my transplant was becoming less livable all the time, with continual pain, and jabbing, and pricking in my throat and windpipe," the 54-year-old Belgian in a telephone interview.

Doctors at Belgium's University Hospital Leuven implanted the donor windpipe in De Croock's arm as a first step in getting her body to accept the organ and restart its blood supply.

About 10 months later, when enough tissue had grown around it to let her stop taking the drugs, the windpipe was transferred to its proper place. Details of the case are in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

"This is a major step forward for trachea transplantation," said Dr. Pierre Delaere, the surgeon who led the team that treated De Croock.

For years, De Croock lived with the pain and discomfort of having two metal stents propping open her windpipe. She went looking for doctors who might be able to help her and found Delaere on the internet.

"I had always wondered, 'So many things are possible, why not a new windpipe?"' De Croock said.

Delaere and his colleagues, who had performed similar procedures on a smaller scale for cancer patients, agreed. Once the doctors had a suitable donor windpipe, they wrapped it in De Croock's own tissue and implanted it into her lower left arm. There, they connected it to a large artery to re-establish the blood flow.

De Croock said having a windpipe in her arm felt strange and uncomfortable. "It was packed in with gauze and my whole arm was in plaster," she said. "So it's not like [I could] peel potatoes."

Bodies as bioreactors

For about eight months, she took drugs to stop her immune system from rejecting the new organ. Though some of the tissue from the windpipe's male donor remains, enough of De Croock's own tissue now lines the organ that she no longer needs anti-rejection medicines.

Patrick Warnke, a tissue-engineering expert at Bond University in Australia not linked to De Croock's case, said it was the first time a donor organ as large as the trachea was nurtured inside the recipient's own body before being transplanted.

"This shows us that we may one day be able to use patients' own bodies as bioreactors to grow their own tissue," he said.

Warnke thought it might be possible to grow parts of organs, like a lung lobe, within patients themselves in the future. Warnke said he has grown parts of a jaw using muscle in a patient's back.

Last year, European doctors announced they had lined a donor windpipe with tissue grown from their patient's stem cells, thus eliminating the use for immune-suppressing drugs. Only a few windpipe transplants have been performed.

'My life has completely changed'

Since operating on De Croock, Delaere and colleagues performed a similar transplant on an 18-year-old man, and two other patients are being prepared for the treatment.

Dr. Eric Genden of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, who has also performed a windpipe transplant, said the Belgian approach was "intellectually interesting," but would probably not revolutionize how doctors treat patients. He said the technique was too complex and labour-intensive to be easily replicated by other doctors.

For De Croock, the surgery has had a huge impact.

"Now I'm very happy. I realize how my life has completely changed," she said. "I can actually do what I want."

Every six months, she has a scan to check her new windpipe, but doesn't have to take any medicines or treatment. Still, doctors are wary of De Croock exerting too much pressure on the windpipe, and she has some limitations when she exercises.

"Her voice is excellent and her breathing is normal," Delaere said. "I don't think she could run a marathon, but she is doing well."

“You Have the Power to Save Lives – Register to be an organ and tissue donor & Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Register to be a donor in Ontario or Download Donor Cards from Trillium Gift of Life Network. NEW for Ontario: recycleMe.org - Learn The Ins & Outs Of Organ And Tissue Donation. Register Today! For other Canadian provinces click here

In the United States, be sure to find out how to register in your state at ShareYourLife.org or Download Donor Cards from OrganDonor.Gov

In Great Britain, register at NHS Organ Donor Register

In Australia, register at Australian Organ Donor Register

Your generosity can save up to eight lives with heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas and small intestine transplants. One tissue donor can help up to 100 other people by donating skin, corneas, bone, tendon, ligaments and heart valves

Has your life been saved by an organ transplant? "Pay it forward" and help spread the word about the need for organ donation - In the U.S. another person is added to the national transplant waiting list every 11 minutes and 18 people die each day waiting for an organ or tissue transplant.