Health News - Child stem cell operation first

Published: 25th March
by TOM FOOT

• A COLLABORATIVE effort between scientists at University College London and doctors at the Royal Free Hospital has led to the world’s first stem cell organ transplant on a child.
The 10-year-old British boy, who was born with an unusually narrow airway, had his windpipe replaced on Thursday with one matching his genetic make-up.
Doctors have described the surgery as a “milestone” achievement. It is hoped the organ – which was created in a laboratory using “tissue-engineering” – will be accepted by the child’s body. Doctors said on Friday the boy was breathing normally.
Professor Martin Birchall, head of translational regenerative medicine at UCL, said: “It is the first time a child has received stem cell organ treatment, and it’s the longest airway that has ever been replaced.
“I think the technique will allow not just highly specialised hospitals to carry out stem cell organ transplants.” 
The child, whose family have asked not to be named, has a rare condition called Long Segment Congenital Tracheal Stenosis. At birth his airway was just one millimetre wide. 
Doctors had previously operated to expand it, but in November last year he suffered complications from erosion of a metal stent in his windpipe or trachea.
In order to build him a new airway, Royal Free doctors took a donor trachea, stripped it down to the collagen scaffolding, and then injected stem cells taken from the boy’s bone marrow.
The donor windpipe was treated with a cocktail of chemicals designed to prompt the stem cells to grow into new tissue once inside the body.
Royal Free doctor Mark Lowdell and colleagues Maryam Sekhavat and Edward Samuel received the donor ­trachea from Italy and some bone marrow from the patient at the beginning of surgery.
The team prepared two different types of stem cells from the patient’s own bone marrow together with some growth-signalling chemicals and returned them to Great Ormond Street Hospital with the donor trachea for the surgery.
The nine-hour operation, performed by Great Ormond Street professor Martin Elliott, follows that of Spaniard Claudia Castillo, 30, who became the first person to receive a transplant organ created from stem cells two years ago.
The boy’s operation is the first time a whole tissue-engineered windpipe has been transplanted.
The Royal Free and UCL formed a partnership, called UCL Partners, last year.